Sophia Steffens

Winter

I said that, on the contrary, I had come to believe more and more in the virtues of passivity, and of living a life as unmarked by self-will as possible. One could make almost anything happen, if one tried hard enough, but the trying—it seemed to me—was almost always a sign that one was crossing…
Inside and Out

In the fourth grade, Dominick Montalero threw an uneaten chili dog at me. To be fair, “I” might not have been his target, but he lobbed it, hard, over the fence where we played kickball. My best friend Meghan and I had been taunting the boys. We had big, fourth grader crushes on a pair…
& other endings

I spent some years of my twenties tethered to a single storyline in my life. It’s the one in which after false starts, and false stops, and what you like to call bad timing, you can love the person you believe you want to, or should, or have all this time. It’s the ‘one day’…
The Last Bit

Mom must have trained us, when we were younger. I can’t think of another explanation. It started with the outdoor pots. There were some saguaro palms, a pot of succulents, hydrangeas, and the forgotten pot of herbs. There were baby citrus trees, to be planted in the orchard come summer. There were pots below the…

Winter