Three Things
Suzanne Richardson takes three seemingly unrelated things and writes them towards one another, a practice that’s central to creative nonfiction and essay.
Feel free to play along and write the same three things towards one another. Watch for each month’s three things to be announced on Twitter. If you’d like to suggest topics, images, ideas, or objects for our writer to bind together through writing, email them to suzanneroserich@gmail.com. She’s up for the challenge.
Rivers + Oceans + Rain
It’s a risk to live, so risky, to survive we must be imperfect, though we are humiliated by our imperfections.
Scorpions + Roses + Goodbyes
I am the villain of my own life, always digging for precious resources, expanding, exploding, paving crude paths over myself. Burying my past self in shallow graves after bulleting her.
Trains + Fire + Pills
In June, I’m not feeling well but I plant seeds and bulbs anyway. What I mean to say is, I plant seeds though I’m not confident in my ability to grow them. I watch for signs of growth despite feeling stuck.
Cake + Mirror + Squirrels
A wave is the movement of a medium back and forth. If this is true, then the ocean of garbage behind my house is the medium that transfers the energy of my city to me.
Feet + Gummy Candy + Black Hair Dye
The more I own my own stories, the more people ask me to lie. The more people want me to say it’s fiction.
Double Yolks + Jersey Shore + Toxicity
Some sources say double-yolks are a sign of twin births or pregnancy. Some sources say double-yolks are a symbol of good luck. Some sources say double-yolks are a sign of death, and death that’s close. One source claimed double-yolked eggs were a sign the egg was removed from a coop in the dark and that’s very bad luck.
Bian Lian + “Sherry Baby” by the Four Seasons + Skeletons
Physiognomy is cropping up again. The junk science of reading faces for personality traits. Face as honesty, face as a map to the “true” self. Charts and graphs on the internet reveal the secrets of a person from the arch of their eyebrow, to the fattest part of their lips. If we have one face, we have one self, and the face becomes the route to the one true being.
Dreams + Ichabod Crane + Candlesticks
I spent 119 days alone this spring without touching another person. In deep isolation I felt things. Fear and paranoia braided my hair. Despair in many shapes interlocking and shifting. What really makes life worth living? If I can’t be with people, how do I know who I am? I looked forward to dreaming, to entering a different space, one that might be less fraught.