Topics | Childhood | The Sun Magazine

Topics

Browse Topics

Childhood

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Don’t Think Too Hard about Avocados

I swear my brain wasn’t always like this. I used to daydream during church sermons, school lessons, and long bus rides. I may have been a shy, awkward nerd with good grades and bad social skills, but inside I was building worlds, whole continents created from nothing and populated with sprawling cities, brave heroes, and looming threats. These days the continents are barren, the heroes defenseless against spotted produce.

By Hank Stephenson February 2024
Readers Write

Fantasy

Calling a 1-900 number, moving to the tropics, writing fan fiction

By Our Readers February 2024
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Such Gifts

He tells me how Mom’s rabbi tried to convince him that life has a purpose, but my brother wasn’t having it. Existence is a tapestry of chaos, he writes, that we impose meaning on to give our lives purpose.

By Brittany Ackerman January 2024
Readers Write

Drama

A high-school play, a support group, a catechism class

By Our Readers January 2024
Poetry

Last Bath

It hasn’t happened yet: the awkward bloom / of my children’s bodies, the bathroom pin-lock / pushed in, the steady stream of marathon showers, / bolts of thick steam all shadowy blue.

By Jared Harél December 2023
Poetry

Lumps of Coal

He was ten and drove a team of mules / through the shadows in mine shafts, / pulling a wagonload of coal / that glinted in the carbide light / anchored to his cotton cap.

By Robert P. Cooke December 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Macho Baby

I know that what we call hate is sometimes love that was pushed under a rock, love deprived of light and water. “Tell me to what you pay attention,” writes the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset in his book Man and Crisis, “and I will tell you who you are.” How much love is putrefying inside boys this very moment, starved for nourishment?

By Nicole Graev Lipson December 2023
Readers Write

Dirt

Shining shoes, spreading gossip, growing plants in prison

By Our Readers December 2023
Poetry

Elegy With Adding Machine And Milk

One cold November day / after the lambs were sold / and the wheat brought in, / my grandfather settled / himself at his desk / and punched the numbers / into an electromechanical / adding machine, the gears / whirring and cachunking, / a long white ribbon pooling / on the dusty linoleum

By Joe Wilkins October 2023
Poetry

Smoke Memories

My mother and I were alone the night / our house burned down. I was nine that summer, / and the smell of smoke clung to my clothes. / And after the fire a tree in the yard / grew crooked with scoliosis, its back bending / away from the remains of the house.

By Doug Ramspeck October 2023