“Again! And sit up straight! You’re slouching.” Naledi repositioned herself on the stool in front of the piano. Her legs, dangling, were starting to go numb. As best as she could, she straightened her back, placed her fingers in position on the
“Again! And sit up straight! You’re slouching.” Naledi repositioned herself on the stool in front of the piano. Her legs, dangling, were starting to go numb. As best as she could, she straightened her back, placed her fingers in position on the
Shattering glass echoes in my ears, snapping my head up from my phone. Right across the street, the front window of Diaz’s Deli— the neighborhood bodega—lays in glistening shambles on the hot sidewalk. The store alarm blares out catching the attention of
Mama always said the Devil is a lie. I remember thinking that before it happened. But Mama was wrong. The Devil isn’t some jealous white boy with a torture fetish. The Devil, the real Devil, is the truth. And hell? Hell is
We arrived with our gods, walked them into the soil and braided totems into our hair. Distance and time made memory a myth. The wind sang a lullaby that brought to mind lavender and lemons but the words were a mystery. She
“3 A.M./Stare at the ceilin’, murder the feelin’/Spider crawl in the corner—Brown Recluse./So appropriate” I rap, far too passionately. Honestly, there is no excuse for my obsession with Childish Gambino. It ruins everything. No, seriously. Because he’s basically made every reference under
I text Alicia that I’m outside and when she responds, I’m already ringing the doorbell. the text was just a courtesy. whether she’s ready for this interview or not is of no concern to me. I need to see this for myself.
On a nimbus of decay, it emerged from the dark recesses of her closet and crept spiderlike toward her threadbare rug. Humid cold wafted from its shadowy body. The reek of wet mulch and grave soil slithered into her nostrils and she
It was a bitterly cold November evening, fifteen minutes or so before closing when the young man first walked into Tia Adelina’s botanica. He was clearly homeless. Swathed in what looked like a tattered old bedsheet, he shuffled in from the cold.
They were floating, flying in tandem, punctuated by the last of the year’s sunlight, perfectly together. Nothing could separate them. The voices of children, the rush of the wind, the first pinpricks of winter’s chill all passed by, but for them, there
Cast aside the bloody hands of the self-righteous for they brittle and collapse amongst the bones of saints. The tree leaves blew just as they did nineteen years earlier, and Adrina remembered it all. She remembered dropping clothes in a huge
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
The first time she noticed, it was purely accidental. A quick glance while reaching for a towel on the nearby rack. The pleasant burn from the Listerine lingered in her newly minty mouth when her gaze flickered to the mirror. It was
The winds bouncing off the gulf swaddle Fleur’s bare head as she stands at its fringes, and almost with the same delicacy her brother Jackson used to smooth down the waves of hair rippling along his scalp with his durags. The breeze
SOUP: It is barely dawn, and the village of Layou is swallowed up in sleep and sea breeze. Tessa lays on her living room couch swiping indolently through the gallery on her phone. She lingers for a while on one photo in
“Let me know when it starts to burn,” Aunt Mimi would say, pressing down on the silver release of the styling chair, lowering me to where I wouldn’t have to jump down to go pee. Then she would move on to another
