Welcome back, all! Have you ever noticed how many of our deepest metaphors for belonging are really about a table? We want “a seat at the table”. We “bring something to the table”. We talk about people we’d “break bread” with. The table is where English keeps its ideas about […]

Welcome back, everyone! Two tiny words are doing enormous work in this week’s prompt: “before” and “after”. English is quietly obsessed with them. We talk about a “before and after”, a “turning point”, “the calm before the storm”. We instinctively understand the world as a set of states with a […]

Welcome back, all! I want to point at a lovely little cluster of English idioms this week: we “stand in” for people, we “fill their shoes”, we “step up”, we “cover” for someone. Notice how physical they all are — feet, shoes, standing, stepping. English imagines identity as a kind […]

Welcome back, everyone! Here’s a small thing about English that I find quietly strange: we say we “take” a photograph, and that we “capture” a moment. Both verbs are a little violent. We seize time, trap it, hold it still. A photograph is, in the language we use for it, […]

Welcome back, all! Two small words are on my mind this week, because they happen to be the ones this prompt hands you: “I’m back.” It’s astonishing how much freight those two words can carry. A contraction and an adverb, and yet the whole emotional temperature of a story can […]