essay Archives | midnight & indigo

The Devil in the Paisley Dress

T.D. Carter — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 11:12:39 +0000

The smell of bergamot grease and hot iron always brings it back—the sticky, humid pulse of an Alabama Sunday morning. At five years old, my world was a haze of golden-brown skin polished with coconut butter until I shone like a new copper penny. In the kitchen of our Chambers County home, Aunt Mae reigned over the stove. The scent of bacon drifted through the house, thick and salty, colliding with the rich, bitter perfume of “grown-up” coffee. To me, that scent was the smell of opinions and secrets. I longed for a sip of that dark chocolate gold—adults and

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Book Review: But Where’s Home? by Toni Ann Johnson

Exodus Oktavia Brownlow — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 02:30:27 +0000

“…you build a life where you can shine in the world and still be eager, always, to get back home.” But Where’s Home? by Toni Ann Johnson poses a question within its title. Its answer highly varies depending upon a multitude of factors such as gender, race, and the circumstances of your living situation and setting to name a few. However, in reading this collection I found that the most interesting factor, the one that truly surpassed with a reach to which no physical, earthly item could measure, was time. Time was a factor within this short story collection. It

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The Grammar of Loneliness

Opal Palmer Adisa — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 11:11:22 +0000

I am seventy years old. Seventy. The number itself feels solid, a hard-back bounded volume, yellow with age, storied with other out-dated volumes, seldom requested by researchers. And while seventy is not ancient—I have every intention of living into my nineties, maybe even beyond, as almost all my family members have—it is a threshold for which I am not prepared. Like really…when did it happen? How have I arrived here? One moment I was fifty, still sprightly, still raising children, still leaning into desire and possibility. Then I was sixty, and I thought, Yes, this is good, I can hold

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On Delicious Forgetting and Being Invited In

Lauren Lluveras — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 22:48:12 +0000

When I’ve told the story about my cousin’s wedding on a plantation to other Black people, the first question (always asked about the bride) is, “Is she?…” Yes, she is. My cousin, Afro-Puerto Rican, like me, married someone white and their gorgeous celebration was hosted on a plantation in Charleston, South Carolina. The lovers were married right along a river bend, once home to rice paddies, and the reception partially took place inside a remodeled barn that was once central to the labor an enslaved population performed there. Huge oak trees framed the ceremony, their branches heavy with Spanish moss

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I Ain’t Eeemuch Say Nothing: Spiritual Psychosis or Paranormal Magnet

Melanie A. Jones — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 04:00:59 +0000

I wiped your ass before you knew you had one. I didn’t say one mumbling word while sitting on the toilet, but I heard her voice just as clearly as if she were in the room with me. After watching a medium’s TikTok on spirits walking among us, I pondered—again, on the pot; panties and pants around my ankles—exactly how much of me do they really see? Coming from generations of habitual line steppers and boundary crossers, privacy was only needed if you were up to no good and self-advocacy was disrespect that could end with a backhand worthy of

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Recipe for Hope: A Listener’s Guide to RAYE’s THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE.

Quintessa Knight — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 23:34:26 +0000

I met God at a strip mall conjunction of a liquor store-jazz club-Baptist church. Well, not really. It felt like I did at the time; I was actually in a Taco Bell parking lot crying into a chalupa and drowning my feelings into a tequila spiked Baja Blast over a breakup. That, piled onto some terrible job news, it felt like there was nothing in my thirty-something years of existence I had yet conquered or figured out in life. At that moment, my playlist decided I needed some religion and provided it in the form of Genesis by RAYE. It

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Gracie, Becoming a Whisper in Plain Sight

Danielle Martin — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:00:40 +0000

“Have you eaten? “Do you have money?” “How are you getting home?” “Do you say your prayers?” These simple questions once evoked such agitated eye rolls from me. The soft pitch of notes gliding into the air, like the chorus, of a song on repeat. Words dangling in the tranquil space, between my grandmother and me, will be no more. Grace, or Gracie, as she began calling herself, embodied the essence of her name filled with quiet strength and endurance. Her silence, masking the savage volcano that could erupt when provoked. But somehow, Gracie always survived whatever life threw

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Why Beauty And I Don’t Get Along

René Hampton — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 02:46:45 +0000

As a child, I used to wear pants on my head. I mean that quite literally. When I was daydreaming and playing pretend, I’d wrap the waistband around my head and secure it with a belt before continuing with my play. The pant legs acted as strands of hair. I threw them back and forth over my shoulder, twisted the legs into a braid, and then undid it all to let my “tresses” fall behind me. When I got older, my brother consistently reminded me of this game I played. I promptly reminded him that he used to join me.

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The Passage Between Brooklyn and Paris

Brianna Holt — Sun, 31 May 2026 04:00:16 +0000

There are 25 passages in Paris. They’re easy to miss if you don’t know where to look: narrow corridors tucked between buildings, occasionally sealed by glass roofs, often glowing with a kind of diffused light. Some are elegant, lined with antique shops and glazed moldings. Others are so worn they seem to belong to an earlier century. Despite their appearance, they all play the same quiet trick: they move you from one street to another without fully returning you to the city outside. Since moving to Paris, I’ve started to see my relocation as a passage: a place you pass

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Book Review: The Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams

Exodus Oktavia Brownlow — Sun, 17 May 2026 04:00:53 +0000

In my reading of The Seven Daughters of Dupree, there’s a prayer on page 79, spoken by the character Evangeline, that has stuck with me: “Girls got to be closer to the earth. Fertile begets fertile. Conjured by the hands of God, we come from the soil, fashioned complete in the mud. That’s why we’s known to create thangs out of nothing. To make a way outta no way.” In that prayer, in my own reflection, I asked myself, and I ask of us: What may the previous years gift to us, to grow? It has been said many times

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