From Mariam Oyewunmi Tijani’s award-winning essay, “My Grandma’s Memory Box,” to Annie Russo’s stirring piece, “The Disappearing Act,” check out our top ten most popular essays of this year.

My Grandma’s Memory Box | Mariam Oyewunmi Tijani

“Today, Nana looks at me with a mix of familiarity and fondness. She smiles. She remembers. I ask her about the first photograph she ever owned—a rectangular black-and-white gelatin silver print her uncle had gifted her in a surprise. She had been stoked to hold an exact replica of herself, nurturing it like a child until she acquired more and assembled an album. When I ask why her love for photographs never inspired her to take her own, her smile fades.”

I Know How Stories Like Mine End | Azeeza Adeowu

“Laolu and I are able to talk through everything, address what I did or what he did, and find solutions to keep our relationship healthy. My biggest flaw as a relapsing overthinker is that I like clarity; I like to talk about issues until it’s completely drained out of me. I do not have space to store anger, hurt, and misunderstandings that can be talked through.”

Roots | Fatima Abdullahi

“My outfit was all laid out and ready. All the kids were wearing jeans and shorts, t-shirts and brightly coloured blouses with flowery embroidery at the edges. I wanted to look like them. I wanted to be like them. For once, there were many muslim children among the party goers, courtesy of their ambassador parents. I wanted to make friends, of which I had so few. I did not want to be made fun of. I did not want to stand out. My mother had other ideas.”

A Molue Epiphany | Shalom Tewobola

“The chaos subsides, and I find myself wedged between a man and his mother. Their hands pass groundnuts and bread across my head like I am a part of their family assembly line. Sweat trickles down my back, and I wonder if financial ruin via Bolt rides might have been preferable to this particular form of Lagos initiation.”

I Knew My Father in Glimpses | Tolu Daniel

“I thought writing this would help. That it would sand down the edges of grief, give me something solid to hold. Instead, it’s only shown me how memory frays, how what was once sharp now blurs at the edges. It doesn’t help that I haven’t gone back. That “home” is a moving target, split between Abeokuta and St. Louis. That I’m stuck negotiating between what was and what’s gone forever. That I still can’t grasp the finality of his death, how it hovers outside time, a stone skipping water before it sinks.”

Breaking Fast | Sapphire Mclaniyi-Agbley

“But I fear that soon, I won’t be able to watch them eat at all. Years from now, maybe twenty, we’ll reunite, and everything will be different. When I mention these habits, they’ll laugh, shake their heads, and swear they never did such things, because, really, who cares? But I do. I care enough to memorize it. Enough to wish I could freeze this moment before it slips away.”

Morning Routine | Kris Green

“Maybe that’s true about you too. Reading this on a subway or in a bedroom or in your car. Maybe you are more special not because of your orientation or your ethnicity or anything you produce for the world, but rather, you’re special because your heart is special. As Whitman said, ‘Every atom belonging to you also belongs to me.'”

Red Devil, Survivor Herself | Brett Ann Stanciu

“I was knitting what my college friend Jean-François would call a “fuck me red” linen sweater, in hopes of wearing it this summer. I might be out in the social world, going to dinners and concerts, whatnot, happy in my skinny cancer body. A simple pattern, knit, knit, knit, a herringbone pattern over the chest.”

Leftover Habits | Yoyo Dou

“Separated from you, my mind wandered. I didn’t listen to the lesson on addition and subtraction. My thoughts kept circling back to the sensation of my skin beneath my teeth, the discomfort of disliking something you enjoyed. I slid my fingers into my mouth, trying over and over to understand it. To understand you.”

Smoke | Jennifer E. Hudgens

“The smooth adobe walls and turquoise doors glow of springtime, of now. I want to be present for prairie dogs and the Yellow Throated Warbler. The scent of lilacs and sage, honeysuckle lingering from tourist traps. I watch a nest of fire ants wandering the cracks between pueblo-paved sidewalks. Running errands for their beloved queen. The weight their small bodies can carry, how do they survive the winters? Build colonies, burrow deep into the gravel desert and sand.”