Creative nonfiction essays
Nicole is currently writing more essays and compiling them into a memoir about religion, isolation, chronic illness, and estrangement. Fun! If you like what you read, please reach out. She’s looking for a publisher.
The Day I Learned I Was a Cow, Split Lip Magazine
“I was sure as it was coming out of me, confirmed when I stood up afterwards, that it was shaped like a bell. About five inches in diameter at the widest point and approximately a foot long. It stuck out of the water like a baby walrus coming up for air.”
Proper Young Ladies, Electronic Literature
“She’d wipe the sweat off her brow with the corner of her apron, then say in clipped, quick enunciation, Don’t you move until I say so. She left. I stayed. I retracted my tongue from the bubbling triclocarban and lye as best I could. The corners of my mouth stretched and dried out. I counted the watermelon-red Kansas Peonies in our neighbor’s bushes to pass the time.”
Dressing the Part, Tablet Magazine
“I flew alone to LaGuardia and took my first taxi to 34th Street. The yellow cab pulled up to Brookdale Hall, and when I saw the registration line wrapped around the corner, my stomach dropped. I immediately saw what my mother wanted us to be, and I understood that we were not. I have never felt so Midwestern.”