Jesse arrives home an hour late. The humidity grips him as he climbs the four floors to his apartment. He remembers when he could take the steps two at a time. Now he pauses on every landing. The old building smells like
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“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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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“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
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“Mannn, the things I could say about my boy, Romeo.” Chuckles rippled through the great hall; some tinged with nerves, others with anticipation. No one knew where this best man reception speech was going but that was the magic of Michael Camden.
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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 an open kitchen window. A stray cat meows from atop a junk car next door. On the
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“Go back to Jamaica? You must be crazy! What would I do out there except pick-up bottles off de street and beg fe change?” Disbelief sharpens his Montego Bay accent. “But what about your mom? Your older brothers? Your aunt, even?” “They
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