“My name is Tavonne Carson. I’m six years old.” If she hadn’t said my name, I wouldn’t have believed the little girl calling from the speakers of the old boom box was me. Steady and brilliant, that voice spoke to a part
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 grey wind-whipped landscape; it tumbles like a deck of cards. A free-falling disaster charges in gravity’s call,
It’s not right for a daughter to see her father naked. I’m sure my father knows this, and deep down in her heart, my mother knows this too. When she sends me to him, she doesn’t look me in the eye, she
“Sit still.” I braced myself for the familiar sting of the plastic comb against some vulnerably-exposed area of my head, neck or shoulders. A few seconds passed and I slowly opened my clenched fists and eyes, relaxed my hunched shoulders, and tried
I. Rose stood in her tiny, cluttered living room, trying to remember why she was there. “Go brush your teeth and find your glasses,” she said out loud, before following her own command: first to the bathroom to brush her teeth, then
My nails kept time on the arm of the chaise to the ticking of the wall clock. I looked at her blankly, no answer to her question. She repeated it. “Do you want another baby more than the life you have with
