The writing we love section of our website has changed. These are the winning selections that were chosen by the participants of our new workshop in connection with Jim Liautaud at The University of Illinois, Chicago. For workshop information, click here.

Every city has its secret doors. In Chicago, I have keys to two of them. My silver key opens the entrance to a building on the busy street corner of Lawrence and Broadway. You might not even notice the doorway in the bustle of redline trains chugging on their tracks and yellow cabs stalking the street for fares. There's a lot of foot traffic, too. Asian, Latino, and African families, hipsters and students wait for buses, or grab a bite of sambussas, pho, or tamales. The Green Mill jazz club stands out with its glitzy green sign. But the door I'm talking about is off to the side, easy to miss, tucked away. I love it for its lack of pretention, because good things, like mysteries or wonders, are often hidden in plain view.

I go to this building once a week - or I try, anyway. I live an hour away by train. The distance I travel makes it even more special for me to arrive at the building. There, I get my fix of two things that feed my spirit: a sense of community and artistic freedom.

Opening the entrance door, I walk up a flight of stone stairs which leads to a community bulletin board. "Asian Human Services" it reads. The board is festooned with pink, white, and pale blue fliers in eight languages announcing classes and workshops like free legal aid, ESL and computer classes. The first few times I stood and read the fliers, program staff in the hall approached me kindly. Being Filipina, I look like many of the Asian and Latina immigrant women who go there.

The women post moving and beautiful stories from their ESL classes on the community board. In sparse, hard-earned English, they write honestly about the husbands and children they left behind, their struggles for education, feeling homesick for food or music, joyous reunions with family, and what they love about America.

Their stories make me weep. They remind me of my mom, Milagros, whose name means miracles. She immigrated to the States in 1969 as a nurse. In the Philippines, she learned formal English in school. But nothing prepared her for the slam of slang. So she watched a lot of TV, mostly soap operas, like "All My Children". A doctor she had worked for in Virginia taunted her about her Asian accent and made her cry. Nervous and shaky at her desk, she became afraid to take orders by telephone. Another nurse, a native speaker of English, patiently helped her, one phone order at a time. Eventually, my mom regained her confidence.

Ten steps away from the community board is the Uptown Writers Space, a studio only artists could dream up - cozy, irreverent, playful. My gold key opens their glass door. Whenever I turn that golden key, it's as if I've broken through a cultural glass ceiling. I enter a world where kitchy art hangs on the walls. Plush psychedelic pillows rest on a white couch. Organic fruit stocks the fridge. Hand-crafted writing desks, arranged in arcs and sweeping lines, invite us writers into the flow of our stories. This is a room where professors, grad students, freelancers, essayists, novelists, playwrights, and poets sweat over every word. Above the din of ambulance sirens, the noise of traffic below, we eclectic wordsmiths strive to master the English language. We are all, including me, welcomed warmly by Julie Saltzman and Susan Karp, the funny and feisty owners who pamper us with encouragement and resources.

Most of the time, I can't believe I get to write in such an incredible space - like who did I fool to get myself a seat at this table? I come from a family of nurses and navy men. Writing seemed a grand dream intended for other people. I can't express how privileged I feel just to be working in the Uptown Writers Space.

And therein lies the poignancy of being ten steps away from Asian Human Services. I am ten steps away from my mother's beginnings in this country, ten steps away from her immigrant story and struggles with English.

Every time I walk through the entrance, past the community board, to unlock the Writers Space door, it's like traveling in time. I gain a sense of how far my family's come in this country. I will never know from experience the hardships my parents faced because they embraced a culture foreign to them. They'll probably never know, either, my sister and brother and my struggles: Even though we speak pitch perfect English and can throw slang like a fastball across home plate, some people in America still treat us as exotic. And in this shrinking, hyper-connected world, isn't the word exotic outdated anyway?

Whatever my family's struggles, history has shown that although a few people may harm us, many more extend their friendship. I keep a look-out for those secret doors, for safe-havens that will harbor my dreams. They're always there, tucked away, in plain view.

Aidan and I set out for the Caribbean, for one of those islands off the beaten path, just before Christmas. And I find it impossible to drink rum now, or to call him again. Three years of friendship, wasted because of his insensitivity, and my goddamn ideology.

The rum was cheaper per ounce than bottled water on our island. We took to the coffee-flavored kind; even on our way out of the country, we were stocking up for the plane ride home.

Aidan's boss, The Millionaire, paid for the trip, a yearly thank you to his employees, and he had told Aidan, his newest addition, to go ahead and invite one guest. Aidan said I was the only person he could tolerate living with for an entire week. The other employees were bringing spouses, and since Aidan was bringing me along as his fake girlfriend. We were used to filling in the gaps for each other like that.

Aidan and I had met as officemates, when we worked for our mentors, John and Colleen, who ambled around telling tall tales to their staff and clients. We cut our teeth there, me crying and laughing, and Aidan just laughing, all the way through. We now work in consulting roles for companies that would have been considered competitors if mine was not the leader in the industry, and his was not The Millionaire's fly by night.

When Aidan and I worked together, one evil woman spread a rumor that we stayed late to canoodle on the table in the conference room, but in truth we had not once touched, not like that. Aidan was tall, and smart, but overly cynical and brash, too. He called women bitches, and had too much hair on his back.

It took us an entire day to reach the island. My back was hurting fiercely by the time we arrived. A cramp, a spasm, something was wrong. The view of the ocean from our room, the sun and luxurious settings eased the pain.

The Millionaire, a short, rotund man of fifty with thick spectacles, and the kind of dotted pink face drinkers get after awhile, took us out for dinner. We were served bacon-wrapped scallions, asparagus spears, filets of beef and crème de Brule while he detailed his business conquests, and the country song he had written, which would be sung by Dwight Yoakum (total bullshit I found out later).

The Millionaire's third wife, Tiffany, a woman in her thirties, looked at her new husband with admiration as he spoke. Tiffany wore a pearl necklace and diamond bracelet; she was regularly tanned, but also taught school, so I tried to keep an open mind. Aidan hung onto the Millionaire's every word, too, deferential in the way I had seen him when he was trying to impress John.

I had always told Colleen, my mentor what I thought, while Aidan admitted to saying whatever John wanted to hear, as long as he got paid, and I couldn't help but feel a base repulsion toward him sometimes.

I hadn't held back with Colleen. I told her that she ought to work at home part-time instead of coming in to manage people when she hated it. I told her that we should dump Ritz-Carlton, those neurotics with the overdone lion insignia that wanted us to draw blood from a rock. I drew silly pictures of the Ritz-Carlton lion eating the Capitol building, or sucking people into its lair, and taped them around the office. This made Colleen laugh, even as she tore them down. Colleen didn't have much time to laugh, she said, because she was had an idiot house husband in zoomba pants at home, and a business to run. But even from within her unhappy life, Colleen taught me every little thing she knew, and I am good at what I do because of her.

I miss her, and I know that Aidan misses John, but since we took some of their clients with us when we began our own consultancies, we are not really talking regularly with them anymore. John and Colleen stole their old boss' entire database when they started their own business, so it's just karma, and good business sense. The Millionaire made John and Colleen look like Jimmy Stewart.

The Millionaire met us in Mexico first with Tiffany in tow, en route to the island. We walked after him, lugging heavy suitcases in search of his favorite cantina between flights.

The four of us settled in at the bar, and ordered beers and fajitas. As the Millionaire and Aidan discussed how rich the Millionaire was, and how rich Aidan was going to be, I realized that the boarding pass that would get me from Mexico to the island was missing from my coat pocket.

"That could be a problem," The Millionaire said, as I searched through my clothes and bags. There was a good chance that I wouldn't be allowed on the next plane, he said. I imagined being stranded in Mexico, calling my father for help. Panic rose in my chest.

"Well, nice to meet you guys," The Millionaire said. "It's been great knowing ya, but there ain't no way you're getting out of here."

"I'm going," Aidan laughed, and I almost hated him. I never would have abandoned him in Mexico.

"They'll let me on the plane," I said, trying to ignore my growing anxiety. "My name has got to be in the computer or something."

I was indeed let on the plane to the island without a problem. Aidan said that The Millionaire had just been teasing me. "He likes to fuck with people," Aidan explained, and I didn't like either of them right then.

I told Aidan how wrong all that had been, and he said that he was sorry, that he had just gotten caught up in The Millionaire's game. We went back to being excited about the resort.

People said that Aidan and I would be good together, but we had each held back over the years, all for good reason. Aidan said he was afraid of women now, and on my end of it, I just hadn't sensed compatibility.

Another part of me, the side that is up for any adventure, said that it would be a thrill to start up a romance on this trip, and in what better place to do it than the Marriott? How on earth we would make sense back home, with Aidan's hyperactive five-year-old son and possessive ex-wife, with all our differences, might sort itself out somehow.

My ardor fizzled as Aidan threw his bags down, and his Fruit of the Loom spilled out over the bed. The underwear was old, with holes in it. He needed a wife to be sure, but I wasn't up for the job. Aidan lit a cigarette, and went to the balcony to look out at the ocean.

I followed him, and Aidan told me how happy he was that I'd come along.

"Are you smoking again?" I asked. He had put so much effort into quitting.

"We're on vacation," he shrugged.

"Well, all right," I agreed reluctantly.

"You're great, babydoll," he said.

I was great because I was not hot. Aidan had went over this time and again: Hot women were psycho because they were used to attracting men without any need for a good personality. Although Aidan granted that I was slightly above average looking, I was definitely not hot. Hot women were a different matter.

I dismissed this along with Aidan's daily rants about the biological roots of all that existed. He was adamant that belief in a spiritual world was moronic, whereas I did all that I could to align myself with the goodness that pulsed through the world. When Aidan went on about how believing in God was ridiculous, and quoted Richard Dawkins, the world's top atheist, I dismissed his rants the way a person would the rituals of anyone with obsessive compulsive disorder. He needed to vocalize his life's philosophy, because it comforted him.

I lit the lavender-scented candles I had brought.

"Great," Aidan said, and we collapsed onto our beds.

We lay out on the beach for those days, while The Millionaire drank by the pool with Tiffany, his red gut hanging over his swim trunks, like Dionysus.

On the second day, Aidan decided to explore the island, and I spread out on my towel in the sun, baking and letting my back heal, looking out at the impossibly blue water now and then.

After twenty minutes of this, a rotund little boy sat on the sand beside me, and began speaking with a stutter. "Y-y-you w-w-want m-m-massage?" he asked.

"Sure." I always wanted a massage.

"How old are you?" I asked him.

"Eighteen," he said, smiling broadly. His voice was high, and his muscles soft; he could have been no more than eleven or twelve.

The boy took an aloe vera plant from the pocket of his cargo shorts, cracked it open, and squeezed its goo onto my back. His strokes were too broad and light. How a massage could be unpleasant, I hadn't known until now. "How m-m-much money you got?" the boy asked. "T-t-t-wenty f-f-for an hour?"

I had forty in my bag, but he wasn't getting it for this juvenile rub down. "I'll give you ten," I told him. "Hey, that's enough," I said when the boy reached underneath my swimsuit, and grabbed me with his inexperienced hand. It was disgusting, like the time my dog licked jam off the crotch of my jeans.

"O-o-o-k-kay," he agreed. I gave him a ten dollar bill, and shooed him away. "Tonight, I be at the Sh-sh-shiggity Shack."

A young woman came into my peripheral vision just after the boy left, staggering a bit, and knelt onto the sand beside me. Her brown face was pretty, her eyes big and desperate.

"Hi honey," she said. "I am Porsche, honey."

Porsche had an aloe vera plant with her, too. She slathered the gel over my legs, back and arms.

"Ten dollar for fifteen minutes, but I give half hour for fifteen dollar," she said.

"Yes," I agreed. This was a good massage. The tendons in my back relaxed, and I felt there was hope that I would walk properly again.

"Donny boy have something special for you and your husbun," she said.

"Who's Donny boy?" I asked, thinking that it was better, safer, if I let the islanders think that Aidan and I were married.

"Donny boy bring you something tonight. Donny boy got the white stuff."

"Hmm," I said. Normally, in my mind, cocaine qualified as one of those vices best never touched, but I saw myself buying a bag from this Donny Boy to snort up with Aedan, and seeing where it would take us. I felt free and sneaky, like when my sister and I cut Sunday School to go candy shopping and we walked up and down the magically long aisles at the store to choose from all the things we wanted.

Porche's fingertips had brushed down my lower back as I was considering her offer of cocaine, but that was also okay, because this was a strange vacation, and her beach was unregulated. The situation struck me as smutty, sensual and funny all at once, and I suppressed a laugh, pushing my mouth into the sand on my arm.

"Your skin is soft, like children. How you survive?" Porsche asked, her hands on my shoulders again.

"I don't know," I said.

"I meet you in your room for more massage," she said. "Fifty dollars, one hour."

I had been around Aidan and The Millionairre too long, and was becoming jaded, like them. That must be it. What else could have happened to change my character, to the point where I was now considering snorting coke, and didn't care if the islanders used and abused me?

Sitting up as quickly as my back would allow, I pressed fifteen dollars into Porsche's hand. "I don't do the white stuff," I managed.

"Okay, honey," she said, and rose to her feet. "I be here tomorrow. You ask for Porsche. Tonight, Donny Boy be here at 8:00."

The 11-year-old boy who had molested me rolled along the sand. "B-b-b-on-f-f-f-ire at the Sh-sh-shiggity Shack tonight," he said.

All that crazy energy blew away into the ocean as Porsche and the boy walked away. I laughed, and would have run into the water to get clean and to celebrate feeling so much alive if not for the fact that I was also ailing.

Aidan and I walked uphill to the other beach hours later, where the Shiggity Shack was located, for the bonfire the boy had mentioned. After a quarter of a mile, I knew that it had been a mistake to walk. My back ached badly. Aidan strode ahead of me, his headphones on. I squinted up at the fading sun, and wondered why I hadn't acknowledged his lack of caring before. I gripped a fence on the side of the road for support, and watched him continue uphill toward the party. He didn't see when I started back toward the resort.

On the beach, I sat, and listened to the roar of the ocean. Someone had left a boogie board on the shore, next to a half-drunk bottle of vanilla rum, and I rode the board over the waves. My life was changing for the better, getting wider, I thought, and it was going to be different when I got back home, although I couldn't say how. After a while of floating over the waves, I went back to the sand and lay down in my wet clothes.

Being on my back in the cold water had made the pain worse, and I realized that I was unable to sit up. I drifted in and out of sleep to the sound of the water rushing against the sand, drinking from the bottle of rum that had been left.

It was dark and quiet when I woke again, and I was terrified by the aloneness, in this strange place, with the inability to sit or stand, yet there was a calmness beneath the anxiety. Something always worked out; someone always eventually came.

Sometime in the night, I stared up into the faces of the Millionaire's other employee, Nancy and her firefighter husband, Frank.

Nancy said that Frank had back problems, too, so they had brought a special ice/heat pack. Frank lifted me up, and we made it back to my room, where Aidan waited as though nothing had happened.

We shouldn't hash this out on the trip, I decided, with us sharing a room. We made it through the remaining days on the island with me on auto pilot, pretending that he was my friend, and that it was the same friendship I had believed we had shared. Most of our three years together had been good, back when I was could ignore his corruption. We ate breakfast together, and dinner with The Millionaire. When Aidan wanted to take hikes, or swim in the ocean, I told him I wasn't feeling well. At the airport, when Aidan strode far ahead of me again with no regard, I let him know what was on my mind.

"Why would you leave me behind on the way to the other island? You knew I couldn't keep up," I stated once we were back at O'Hare.

"I'm not having a friendship based on obligation," Aidan said, lifting his bags onto his big shoulders.

"It's no obligation when you care for someone," I said. "And besides, the opportunity to help someone else is a gift. It makes you a better person."

" Look, this is how I am," he shot back. "We've never seen eye to eye on some things, but-"

"Okay," I said, stopping him. "But don't drag me into your cynical little world, because I don't live there, and I'm tired of you putting me down because I believe in things."

"How do I put you down?" he wanted to know, as though he really had no idea.

"You do it with such finesse that you think people don't notice," I explained. "But I notice."

He gazed down at me, looking perplexed.

Aidan took my hand in his. "Come on, babydoll."

"I don't know," I said, squeezing his hand. It was enormous compared to mine, like a gorilla's. "I'm trying to be a better woman with each year."

"I'm trying, too," he said, and made his way toward the el station, where he would board a train that would take him back to his apartment, from which he worked for The Millionaire. Maybe it was better this way, I thought, us reaching the end of the line, and aware of it.