essay Archives | midnight & indigo

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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After Toni Morrison: A Hot Thing

A.T. Mitchell — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:16:27 +0000

She won’t let go until I do. Like jazz. Reaffirming that I am beloved, she sits me in her lap, adopts Maw-maw’s eye, to loose that circle of iron. Then she leads me to the clearing as I cry. Cry to the sound of her calling “What did Toni Morrison teach you?” I was asked this by a professor after a semester of studying Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Beloved, Paradise, and Playing in the Dark. How can I begin to answer such a question? I don’t think I can. And it’s not because I didn’t learn anything, but because what

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Àbíkú

K E Garland — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:34:28 +0000

I arranged a reading with a Santería priestess per my sister’s advice. Our ancestors had provided her with divine clarity and when she inquired about messages for me, they said, She is a skeptic. She has to do this herself. A week later, I followed instructions: I dressed in all white, set an unlit white candle nearby, and impatiently waited for the priestess to call. Introductions were short and, within the first five minutes, several spirits appeared as a caucus of cacophony. They overwhelmed the priestess with declarations, laughter, and advice: She comes from a long line of Native Americans.

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Issue 16 is here!

midnight & indigo — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 04:00:55 +0000

Nine Black women writers from across the U.S., the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe share unforgettable short stories and essays that span four continents and nearly a century of Black women’s lives. A sixteen-year-old navigates a birthday party, crazy Jamaican family, and a road trip. A dinner party with friends reveals a secret. A woman at a village burial and remembers every version of herself. Another is days away from a new life in San Francisco when the world closes. A Black American student discovers that the mirror Africa holds up is not the one she packed. From 1940s South Carolina

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If We Must Be Broken, Let It Be With Witness

Christine Michele Estopare — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 12:32:14 +0000

The sky is milky-eye gray over Paramount, Los Angeles. LA has been hurting since the ICE raids started in January 2025, sobbing itself raw over the snatching of dishwashers and middle school kids, teachers and orange pickers. It is a Saturday in the part of June where heat-haze lifts off streets. The people have been gathering since Friday: at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, on the surrounding by-way streets, and the 101 Freeway. On a street somewhere in Paramount, a young man wearing a yellow motorcycle helmet scoops up a river rock from a nearby pathway, and clutches

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