Our secrets are safe here.
The Vault is home to intimate stories by women — our deepest thoughts, our darkest secrets, and our untold experiences worth sharing.
Written by Phuong Nguyen, Illustration by Gracey Zhang
“Ordinary Love” is found in the details, prodding at the question of vulnerability and the means of attaining it with another person. Is love a place to be breached, or just a feeling, transient like any other?
Phuong Nguyen writes in a way where the retelling of a small, fleeting scene, out of many, is made grand and meditative. This is the kind of fiction which inspires you to collect each vignette and hold it dear, until you reach the final paragraph, and probably long afterwards. What will stay with you is the imagination: in oven-baked worms, or how the sweater of someone you’re fond of can look softer than anyone else’s. Here is a story within a story, shared in quiet, near darkness, from one person to another: the way many, if not most, stories are told.
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Written by Frankie Barnet,
Illustration by Herikita
A story about talking to yourself.
Written by Ameema Saeed,
Illustration by Paola Saliby
A story about living in a body.
Written by Phuong Nguyen,
Illustration by Gracey Zhang
A story about letting someone in.