Amid the upheaval and turmoil that can so often feel inescapable these postmodern days, basking in the creative nonfiction for The Citron Review’s Summer 2025 issue nourished me. The writers of these six selections did that fine work of grounding their contributions in specificity, time, and place, while propelling their narratives into the amorphous and not-yet-known. They speak to the missing and yearned-for, root us in right now and speculate about what’s next; their voices conjure an array of visceral lived experiences both mournful and affirming.

In “A River in Seven Parts,“ Mizuki Yamamoto writes of the seven bodies of water that have shaped her and framed her life: “It is hard to imagine the colors green and blue in this place,” she writes, “but I meet a boy here who smells like a forest and I call him mine. We skip along the concrete embankment and lay on our backs in the heat of summer, trying to sift constellations from headlights, waving away smog and half-hearted attempts at love.”

In “Barbie’s Blue Leather Case,” Tamara MC brings us with her on an increasingly dangerous 20-hour trip through the desert where, as a child, she was irrevocably transformed by trauma. She writes, “11 AM: The van shrinks as we pass through Hermosillo, city sounds giving way to the highway drone. Heat ripples rise from the asphalt. The boys’ bodies claim more space, multiplying, expanding, pressing against the windows that steam with breath and sweat. I hate them.”

“We Fed the Birds” by Donna Obeid is a resting place, a pause; an invitation to revel in moments of soothing single-minded focus. She writes, “We did it like angels cloaked in the stillness. We did it for kindness, for love. And when we went back inside, we stood watching from the window. Always astonished how they came like little divine chariots.”

In “Clinging” by Sarah Hare, a mother faces a decision of whether to tell her small child the truth about what lies ahead. “Our bodies are curled up in her bed,” she writes, “a quilt of dancing hexagons up to our chins, Olive’s foot nestled in that soft valley between my ribs and hip bone–just as it was on the inside two and a half years ago–when she asks if it will always be this way, if she will ever be able to ride her plastic neon pink trike to the park again. I know she’s asking about the haze of smoke that has seeped into our sky from Canadian wildfires devouring every crumb of the land above us.”

“Solely Survival” is Maura Aradia’s reckoning with the equation she must figure every minute of every day so that she may exist, where each decision needs to be measured and weighed. She writes, “The sun sticking its hands into the windows of my sedan at 7am forces me awake. I awake to the unpleasant tickle of sweat pooling at my lower back. I awake hot and alone. I awake at 7am, three hours before I have to leave for work.”

And Raima Evan pieces together her family’s immigration story in “How I Knew Him,” an homage to a grandfather she has lost. “When my grandfather met his family at Ellis Island,” she writes, “my mother didn’t recognize him. For some time after that, she wasn’t sure if he was the father she used to have or a different father who somehow showed up in America. I knew none of this when I was a child, running through my cousins’ backyard. Back then, my grandfather was the man in the kitchen who baked cookies and gave me two gold bracelets, one with my name written in cursive, the other with a faint engraving of vines.”

These writers bring to this issue the push-pull of survival, of what we grow used to and what we don’t expect. They tell of the distances we go, of how we care for others and ourselves, of what we might be hiding, and of how we keep the good in sight even when there’s worry for us all. I hope reading their work transports and perhaps even unburdens you for a short while.

Wishing you a restorative season with time to savor what feeds you. Thank you to our contributors and thank you, reader, for your support of Citron.

Ronit Plank 
Creative Nonfiction Editor