Tina Wargo
Bio
Tina is a queer writer in Brooklyn, who uses Google mostly to image search 45-year-old women in suits, and Twitter mostly to report on her findings. She has a deep obsession with narrative, a CAROL tattoo, and, relatedly, a degree in film.
Stories (13)
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Next Year Is Tomorrow
Five years ago, on New Year’s Eve, I was living in Brooklyn but had been home in Pennsylvania for Christmas and though I don’t remember why or how, I guess I returned early. I went to Astoria to celebrate. It was my first New Year in the city. It was my first away from family. It was my first that I ever went out, instead of sat in basements eating wings and playing games and drinking weird old beer and watching the real grown-ups celebrate and kiss each other and hug their families. It was sadder than I expected.
By Tina Wargo4 years ago in Pride
The Thing That Comes In Waves
The water is too deep. It’s too dark, too. “Too” is my new resting state for anything even a smidge over the baseline of utter normalcy. It’s 80°? Too hot. We’re driving 70MPH? That’s too dangerous. It’s been four months? That’s too long. Can’t see the bottom? Too deep. Too dark. Too much.
By Tina Wargo4 years ago in Humans
What The Cracks Let In
It’s not worth it. That’s all I can think as I’m crumpled into a pile on the concrete floor, my knees bruised from diving into the shed, my arms torn up from the brambles that licked at me fiercely. The same bushes my dad used to trim each spring on our first trip up. The same floors my brothers and I would scribble chalk stars, flowers, rainbows, monsters onto when the rain pelted the lake so ferociously, it became unswimmable. The stars look different now, I’d imagine, but I wasn’t crazy enough to go outside at night to see them anymore. There hasn’t been a rainbow in months; no rain will do that. The monsters aren’t as pastel as we’d pictured them. They’re bigger, too. But the floor is still here. And the bushes. And here I am.
By Tina Wargo5 years ago in Fiction
The Creation of Matter, or What Do You Do When The World Stops Spinning?. Top Story - June 2021.
What I’d really like to be is everything. Is there an app for that? The older I get, the more I come to realize that the thing I’m really struggling with— underneath it all, hidden behind the daily desperation of “when will I finally become the person I want to be?” and the sometimes-hourly spiral sessions over my too-big feelings and too-small life— is that what I want cannot be quantified. No matter how hard I try or how intensely I think about it or how many different ways I find to write about it, I can’t seem to crack the code on balancing my desire for small, comfortable, everyday joys and my desperation for big, lofty, bucket-list happiness.
By Tina Wargo5 years ago in Humans
Icarus and Us
Heat does rise and you lived, in your cozy (for some), claustrophobic (for others) cottage so far up North, the summer hit late, but when it hit, it came on hard and with a fervor and fever I had not yet known. Did you know? When you cracked the windows in the car, when you put the fan on full speed, when you planted your garden, when we jumped into the old quarry, holding hands? Did you know how hot it would get? Did you know we’d fly so close to the sun, our wings would burn, or did you think the iced coffee and the hand-picked tomatoes and the occasional rain shower would cool us off?
By Tina Wargo5 years ago in Poets
Here, or Anywhere
You’re here looking for answers. Or, you’re here knowing you’ll guffaw at the ones offered to you like they’re tiny golden gifts from the stars and not overwritten, under-developed fortune cookies. But you’re here anyway. You like being here. You like being anywhere.
By Tina Wargo5 years ago in Wander
