Tuesday, October 13, 2020 - “Trouble” - Elizabeth Lerman

I read for hours on end, curled in a chair by the window. I read Joyce Carol Oates and reveled in the masterful horror of her words, in the girls she birthed on the page and the doom that surrounded them. Doom and panic and pain and still they shone bright as themselves, letting their cracked minds run and run with their thoughts, not worrying once what their family or friends had to say about them. They got into trouble, big trouble, car trouble, boy trouble, man trouble, old man trouble, arson, murder, suicide, depression, desperation, any kind of trouble they could get their hands on. Their kind of trouble made mine look so safe and pleasant, my legs pulled up to my chest in my big chair, the nurses monitoring me less than the others because really, I was no trouble. Maybe that's what I regret, being no trouble at all.

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Elizabeth Lerman is a creative writer based in New York City. A graduate from the University of Vermont, where she earned her B.A in Film Studies and English Literature, Elizabeth is passionate about forging strong female voices and diverse narratives. In her writing she focuses on the significance of small moments and the space they hold in both her thoughts and those of her characters. Elizabeth currently lives in Brooklyn where she is working, slowly but surely, on her first novel.