PeonyMagazine

  When the house finally goes quiet, and the moon spills through the blinds like a memory, I start thinking about the people I’ve hurt. Not intentionally, not cruelly, just carelessly, like children often do when they don’t yet understand how heavy their hands can be. My sister’s laugh used to annoy me. It was loud and easy, like she didn’t know the world was supposed to be hard. I was the older one, sharper, quicker with words that cut deeper than I ever meant. I used to mock her drawings, hide her toys, and make her cry just to feel in control of something. We grew up and drifted apart, different cities, different lives. But some nights, her face at eight years old visits me again. That small, wounded look that asked what she had done wrong. It eats at me, even now. I think about calling her, telling her I’m sorry for every cruel thing I said, for being a sister who didn’t protect her. Sometimes I imagine her forgiving me. Sometimes I imagine she won’t. But I’ve learned that apol...

  Dear Autumn, I’m writing to you from a place that feels unanchored. The leaves are just beginning to turn, a whisper of gold and crimson at the tips of the maples outside my window, the air has that crisp, new scent, with that promise of change that I’ve always found so intoxicating, but this year, it feels different. Usually, I welcome your arrival with open arms and a whole heart, ready for the gentle cadence of colder days and longer nights. This time, I’m greeting you more carefully. There’s a heaviness in the air, but it’s not from your approaching storms. It’s inside me. My world has been changing at a dizzying pace, a torrent of personal and financial burdens that leave me feeling like a lone leaf caught in a strong gust of wind, spinning without direction. There are nights I lie awake, the silence amplifying my anxieties. The weight of it all – the constant worry over bills, the quiet ache of a friendship that has faded, the feeling of not being enough, of losing my way –...

  Special Issue • September 2025: Letters in Autumn (Part 1 of 4) Dear Autumn, Whenever you arrive with your soft breeze and golden skies, I feel a sense of calm. You remind me that life moves in seasons, that nothing stays the same forever. And maybe that is why I feel so close to you now, because my life as a mother feels like it has shifted into its own  autumn. I still remember the early years, when my children were small and everything felt like spring, new, fragile, and blooming all at once. Those mornings are noisy and full of life, like the first buds pushing through the soil. I remember the mess, shoes by the floor, toys scattered on the floor, lunchboxes that I tried to fill with love even when I was too tired to stand. I waited by the window in the afternoons, just to catch a glimpse of their faces running home to me. And at night, I sat beside them doing their homework, I barely understood, pretending I wasn’t just as exhausted as they were. It was chaos, but it wa...