My first

When I was 16 I tried my first oyster. By that age my parents had divorced and my father was living in New York City. The divorce agreement was that I would stay with him one weekend a month. He even had a bedroom for me in his small but slick apartment in Manhattan.

Marion Sosa is a mixed media artist based in Mexico. These images are taken from her War of the Roses series, which is a personal and cultural reflection on ideas of family. Shayl Prisk spoke to Marion about this series and the way these images reflect on certain norms and expectations regarding love, marriage and relationships, and the stigma that is still attached to dysfunctionality within families.

It was small, and only the lip of the stone was showing from under the tangle of wildflowers that covered it. The headstone was a marker for one long since gone, a pilgrim who had lived out his last day in the very terrain I was now passing through. I had read in books that pilgrims were drawn to this area: the peircing air, the echoes from the sheer cliff faces that towered like gods above all the life across the plains beneath

Can't write. Can't look down at the page. Can't look at myself. Knowing what I am is not as harsh as knowing what I lost. Can't sell out if life has left your shell inside out. Murder she wrote. I'm trying so. The chain letters were weak and useless. What am I doing here ? I must have read the pillards of books that surround me at least thrice a sculpture of what I was, I stare out at this clutter, wishing I had a clue. That's nothing new.