Katherine's Creative Writing

  • Katherine Schwartz

    Holding Space for the Third Space: The Demise of Social Spontaneity

    When I hear older generations (my parents, friends’ parents and parents’ friends) tell stories of their twenties in New York, they reminisce over the dive bar they frequented on Tuesdays, the random parties where Mick Jagger showed up, the blind dates that turned into marriages. It all feels vaguely romantic and inexplicably out of reach,…

  • Katherine Schwartz

    The Strangeness of Grieving Liam Payne

    I saw the news at 6 pm as I closed my tabs and signed off to leave the office.  “Did you just see this headline?” I asked my colleague, Geoff, who mirrored my astonishment. Our other coworkers exchanged looks—clearly we were the only ones young enough to care about the boy band. He laughed nervously…

  • Katherine Schwartz

    December 1st

    Walking home against a gust that cut to the bone, I wore a puffer zipped to my eyes with one of those tented hoods that block all peripheral senses, my hat and scarf tucked underneath. I gazed longingly into windows of warm homes like an orphan child wandering the streets alone on a cold winter’s…

  • Katherine Schwartz

    Is Reading Performative Now? 

    On the corner of Bleeker and Barrow, a slender twenty-something with glossy waves and gazelle legs glided down the sidewalk. She wore a mini skirt, ballet flats, ivory babydoll blouse, and a patent leather yellow Prada shoulder bag. As I watched to clock her outfit, she made her way toward the intersection, stopped at the…

  • Katherine Schwartz

    I Survived Cold Spring, NY: Drop your PSLs and Listen to This PSA

    It was the first rain-free weekend last fall and my boyfriend Parker’s first time visiting my new home in Manhattan, where I’d recently moved. “I’m dying to leave the city,” I told him. We brainstormed a day trip upstate where we could drink apple cider, go pumpkin picking, touch grass. Thanks to an Instagram reel,…

  • Katherine Schwartz

    Sitting in a Chair Somewhere in Delaware, Response to James Wright

    That bit of light after its source has gone away, the grainy skies of 5 pm.  On goes the gas lit fire next to the sun room once  streaming with white light, its windows now black like paintings hung. The granite counter covered in crumbs, business cards, mint wrappers, a clipping from the Style section…

  • Katherine Schwartz

    What Happened in Vegas?

    I spent my five hour Spirit Airlines flight to “Sin City” wedged in a middle seat between two rows of a drunken bachelor party, which I attempted to remedy with Spirit’s “BuzzBallz special”–two canned margaritas and some pretzels. We made our rocky landing around 11 pm, three hours later than when we were supposed to arrive.…

  • Katherine Schwartz

    July 2011

    The Claire’s cherry charm necklace fastened  beneath my swinging side ponytail, heels calloused from barefoot tag, chewed split ends,  capris with grass stains and unshaved shins, pale. Somewhere in the yard I lost the red charm, we scanned the grass until the last light thinned, the afternoon’s fun cut short like thin yarn. No lost-and-found…

  • Katherine Schwartz

    On the Street Where You Live

    My favorite house on Kensington,  white wood with black shutters. A picket fence but not suburban, that timeless style that never stutters. Outside is the street’s source of sweet scent, a magnolia tree three times the house’s size.  Its swelling branches like a tent, I want to get married under it, leaves falling as hymns…

  • Katherine Schwartz

    Intrusive Triolet

    I’m scared of the distance between us,  that maybe we met too young.  To two destinations we travel farther, by car, by train, by plane, by bus,  I’m scared of the distance between us.  Are we fated to fade like a drugstore blush? Are we a love song singing, sang, or sung? I’m scared of…