Author: Victoria Addesso

Vicki Addesso has worked in various fields over the years, full-time and part-time. In between family life and bill-paying endeavors, she works at writing. Co-author of the collaborative memoir Still Here Thinking of You~A Second Chance With Our Mothers (Big Table Publishing, 2013), she has had work published in Gravel Magazine, Barren Magazine, The Writer, Sleet Magazine, Damselfly Press, Feminine Collective, and Tweetspeak Poetry. A personal essay is included in the anthology My Body My Words, edited by Loren Kleinman and Amye Archer. You can follow Vicki on Twitter @VickiAddesso.

For Emily

March 7, 2022March 7, 2022 Victoria Addesso

I give you the gasoline rainbow glistening next to the crumpled beer cans and soggy strips of newspaper. I give you diamond shards of broken bottles and the ruby ribbons of spilled Cabernet decorating the dirty gutter. I give you the tough greens growing between the concrete’s cracks and their Read more

Tuning the Guitar

October 9, 2019October 9, 2019 Victoria Addesso

Music enters my dream. It is distant, indistinct. Then, I am awake. I can still hear it. A guitar, one note over and over but changing. It is the middle of the night. I keep my eyes closed, trying to hold on to that flimsy layer of sleep out of Read more

Once Written

March 30, 2019March 31, 2019 Victoria Addesso

There are times when I want to take facts and change them. I want to take the life around me, and in me, and turn it into a story. I want to rewind, and cut and splice. Leave some parts out altogether; reverse the chronology; take the raw material of Read more

All At Once

December 23, 2018December 23, 2018 Victoria Addesso

It was winter. The boy…young man…child… (he was all at once) sat on the frozen ground in the middle of the football field looking up at the clear night sky. Black-blue background dotted with the white pinprick specks of stars. The moon was gibbous, waxing. The boy lifted his right Read more

How I Became a Citizen of the United States of America

June 7, 2018May 7, 2019 Victoria Addesso

My parents had sex; nine months later I was born. My citizenship is a result of dumb luck. I did not work for it or yearn for it. I did not have to struggle to get to this country. Citizenship was a gift. I have not felt the burn of bigotry Read more

After Dinner

March 31, 2018October 15, 2018 Victoria Addesso

My twenty-year-old son, Billy, and his girlfriend, Alex, nineteen, cooked dinner for me tonight. Gemelli pasta in a cream sauce with mushrooms, zucchini, garlic and pecorino romano cheese. Delicious. It was late – 9pm. Billy had yelled up the stairs to his younger brother, Steven, when the food was ready, Read more

Days Like This

November 22, 2017May 7, 2019 Victoria Addesso

Okay, picture this. It was years ago. I’m eighteen, skinny, it’s June, early on a Saturday morning, and it’s raining buckets. I’m standing on the corner at the bus stop, the intersection of Mill Road and Route 22, the hub of this suburban town. My umbrella is dark blue and Read more

After the Election, I Have Been Falling Apart

May 24, 2017October 11, 2018 Victoria Addesso

It has become difficult to walk since I started falling apart. I take a few steps and feel a patch of skin sliding down my calf under my jeans, so I must stop to catch it before it slips onto the ground. I stick it in my pocket hoping I Read more