Teen Ink

Advanced Search Results

• Nonfiction > Personal Experience
  Six Inches to the Deep

  

  By CarlieSorosiak, Chapel Hill, NC

  Oblong, olive-colored, and clear with chunky, black lashes, Brianna's eyes blinked. And so did mine, over and over, trying to bat away the chlorine and the screaming, aching sensation that life had changed. I distinctly remember Brianna's eyes, the unintimidated gaze of the first black girl to m...
• Nonfiction > Travel & Culture
  Prayers in Peru

  

  By CarlieSorosiak, Chapel Hill, NC

  The day was warm and surprisingly bright, an aberration in a sunless Peruvian winter. The light stung my eyes as I furiously ascended the jagged mountainside, slipping, clenching the broken rocks with my fingertips. After two more agonizing bounds, I reached the whitewashed chapel with the wrought-i...
• Nonfiction > Travel & Culture
  Independence Day in Huanchaco, Peru

  

  By CarlieSorosiak, Chapel Hill, NC

  Smash a mirror into a million insignificant pieces, and then quickly glue the fragments back together. The mirror looks different than before: less iridescent, cracked, but still polished glass. Such is my life after two months in Huanchaco, Peru, breaking and rebuilding my body, sex and mind, like...
• Nonfiction > Personal Experience
  Independence Day in Huanchaco, Peru

  

  By CarlieSorosiak, Chapel Hill, NC

  Smash a mirror into a million insignificant pieces, and then quickly glue the fragments back together. The mirror looks different than before: less iridescent, cracked, but still polished glass. Such is my life after two months in Huanchaco, Peru, breaking and rebuilding my body, sex and mind, like...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Shattered

  

  By CarlieSorosiak, Chapel Hill, NC

  Frayed crinoline and white lace And broken glass all over the place, Scattered on the hardwood floor Behind your antique, mahogany door. Broken, busted, cracked, crashed, Fractured, split, torn, smashed, Blasted, wrecked, pulverized, exploded, Smattered, ruined, burst, imploded. Your mot...
• Poetry > Free Verse
  Left Behind

  

  By CarlieSorosiak, Chapel Hill, NC

  Your fingerprints in the crusted milk On the kitchen counter are still there. And your imprint in my sheets of silk Reminds me of Sunday mornings. Scattered coupons at the table’s end, That we clipped last Tuesday night, Will never be thought of again, Except when I smell vanilla, your ...
• Fiction > All Fiction
  The Nevada Motel

  

  By CarlieSorosiak, Chapel Hill, NC

  “Welcome to the Nevada Motel, where we aim to impress the average low-life tourist. Here is your plastic key, sir. If you or your astoundingly obese wife have any questions, please hesitate to ask. Breakfast is served only at eight, and the food is adequate at best. I hope you enjoy your stay at o...
• Fiction > Realistic Fiction
  Skittles

  

  By CarlieSorosiak, Chapel Hill, NC

  The last train to Brooklyn speeds beneath a relentless, purple sky that burns until Orion becomes the consistency of honey. It is a bullet train, impeccably engineered and meticulously inspected. It bullets down the same fourteen-mile, steel track twenty times a day. Passengers fly in and out like a...
• Fiction > Realistic Fiction
  My Lena

  

  By CarlieSorosiak, Chapel Hill, NC

  Unexpectedly vile, my mother was spoiled chocolate, the outside edible, the inside festering with a sordid mold. I hated her look, with auburn hair so curly that it never lengthened, and eyes emaciated, near concave, ebony, burnished like old copper and emaciated like her body. When no one was watch...