Rianna Pauline Starheim writes about human rights and wrongs, fire, war, PTSD, and resilience. Her work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Pacific Standard, and New America.
All summer I found thousands of four-leaf clovers. I had been living at a firehouse since COVID-19 broke out, volunteering as a paramedic. One slow shift, my EMT partner Sam and I found a couch on a grassy hill overlooking a leveled...
Electrocardiogram (ECG) monitors are like nonfiction writers: taking in the world and spitting it out in fewer dimensions with more meaning—maybe even some sense.
In Kabul’s largest cemetery, the weather is winter morning air. Jagged headstones fan up the mountainside with a view over a sprawling swampy lake. The Shuhada-e-Saliheen cemetery (the name means “pious martyrs”) is built near a crumbling...
Nitrous oxide, N2O, is a fuel racing crews use to propel their cars hundreds of miles an hour. Under intense pressure, it allows the same engine to produce more power. Blends of N2O fuel rockets. They might include, for example...
The average adult has eight pounds—twenty-two square feet—of skin. Healthy adults can lose a liter of blood before going into shock, and vital signs help monitor the onset and stages. Unlike adults, children can lose nearly half their blood...
In Afghanistan, kite string is run through crushed-glass powder before it is coiled. Kite strings bite. My instinct when I’m cut is to grab the string tighter. But I have to let go. I’d rather be up with the kites. Catching the wind with...
