Familiar Messes and other essays

“I found solace in nothing. Because everything was temporary. And days flew by like heavy cigarette smoke floating above the dancing heads in the city’s most notorious club, like speech bubbles written in a language you cannot understand, like a dragon’s breath you keep chasing, like pills that move from your hand to your red lips.”

Gratiagusti Chananya Rompas’ personal essays are troves of memories she can always turn back to. They started off as day-to-day accounts of events from her younger years and the now. But Anya, as she is often called, is obsessed with how things people do — often in haste — quickly fossilize into memories, and how these memories, in turn, shape their lives.