Edwin L. Shuman Award for Creative Nonfiction Essay
An excerpt from Mega’s essay Goodbye to Nothing:
The house was mine! Despite loud or quiet times, it contained my home: beautifully weird people who take what is broken and reshape it into a lumpy thing glued together by love and respect. Every time I thought of my stuff and doing away with any of it, I recalled the time I used an unspecified piece of plastic and some felt fabric to create the bed for my diorama of an urban apartment. Or the father’s day where I gave my dad his only remaining baby picture, and how he stared at it in amazement, believing it had been gone forever. Or Rume’s letter from kindergarten saying he loves God and his family and his “coasons.” It was strenuous to carry, but I liked my collections. The state quarters, fancy perfumes, baby teeth (it’s not gross). They were a reminder of the significance within frivolous lives, and that’s necessary when every day congeals into a season that congeals into a year that congeals into a feeling. And now I wonder if a goodbye is even useful.