I sat on the couch of a woman who decorates her office to make it feel like a home outside your own. She has locs dipped in watercolors. She has a favorite lamp that went missing once before…
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The leaves on the two maple trees in the yard beamed a spectacular fiery red as the blue bottles that hung from them shimmered under the late afternoon sun. It was an uncharacteristically warm Fall day in the small southern…
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No roads led here, this place like a scar of an old wound. No signs marked its location, no post hung with its name. There…
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They built a church on the land where my body was broken. Parishioners come every Sunday morning believing it to be holy ground. Yet I know this to be the ground where my soul was desecrated one Thursday evening. Prior…
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My grandma’s house was always full. The hinges on the front door were almost invisible. In the heart of Cleveland, Ohio, not a side town along the way,…
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The Traveling Refugee. She watched her ancestors burn and hang. In the land of the free. In the land of the brave. They have known many graves. Unwilling…
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“If y’all weren’t so difficult, maybe it’ll be easier to get a man.” “Y‘all? Difficult?” I repeat the triggering words as if they can…
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The day Chiamaka disappeared, her father left the house in precisely three pieces. The first piece left at sunset, when the world, consumed by…
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No roads led here, this place like a scar of an old wound. No signs marked its location, no post hung with its name.…
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Tierra sits, her hands folded demurely in her lap, as she waits for her father’s Cadillac to turn the corner. Yellow curtains flutter out of…
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On Monday, Venessa Stenson stared out the window during math drills. Mrs. Reynolds called to her, asked her for the solution in the problem set,…
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I email him and tell him that I want to see him. I send it via email because I deleted his number to keep myself…
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“You real fine and you pretty,” the smooth words rolled past his toothpaste commercial level white teeth and thick coffee bean shade lips. Before a…
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“I’ll be damned if anybody beat me again, tellin me I’m ugly and worthless. What’s family? I don’t need you or your bullshit. That’s what…
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Adesanya’s sunken eyes show shadows and fire. The wet earth opens and moves under foot. Behind the log cabin, beyond the stone ridge, stands a…
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Jocelyn found it hard to focus on the date, although it had been the only thing occupying her mind until she got the text from…
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The leaves on the two maple trees in the yard beamed a spectacular fiery red as the blue bottles that hung from them shimmered under…
More