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, but real Cleveland, is where I stayed. In the white paneled house with red
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, but real Cleveland, is where I stayed. In the white paneled house with red
“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 somehow mean something else. They sting differently when they come from a man who shares the same melanin
The day Chiamaka disappeared, her father left the house in precisely three pieces. The first piece left at sunset, when the world, consumed by endless night, became his sworn enemy. A cowardly enemy at that, who only struck among shadows and darkness,
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 to be 6 ft. under. She travels 6,000 miles abroad. I was fully prepared
I. Places that I am terrified of returning to: Shitty $49-a-night motels with dingy sheets and showers overrun with mildew smelling of sweat, cigarettes, and desperation; the backseat of a 1979 Cutlass parked in the dark alley between the corner store and
At the produce markets that populated Church Avenue, if someone cut in line or pushed her while trying to squeeze past, my mother would hurl the harshest obscenity that came to mind, “Fuck!” It was in fact one of her favorites because
It’s late afternoon as we climb into my father’s gray Mercedes. As we stay stationary in the garage, I lean my fro against the pane and stare out of it and above into the cobwebs collecting in the far corner; a bee
Sometimes she thought it must be loneliness that made her see things. She could see the dark lord’s face peering down from the clock tower on top of the courthouse. His red eyes followed her. No matter how tightly she closed her
