relationships Archives | midnight & indigo

God is in the tree

Briana Thomas — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 14:11:43 +0000

My grandmother’s mango tree is so big it’s like the size of an oak tree. It takes up so much space in her backyard that the next tree is more than six feet away. I’ve only known it to be big and powerful, sometimes daunting when the hurricane winds pass through its branches. How long has it been there? Nobody knows, but it creaks and sways as if it is ancient. I wonder how many seasons it’s seen. It’s much too big for me to climb so I always just say hello, play, eat, and read at its roots so

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But I don’t want her to be sad

Cy White — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:10:23 +0000

Hey, hey, hey! You’ve reached the phenomenally favored and fantastic ______! It is her mantra every month. A cadence like daytime television, like weather that’s going to be sunny on the West Coast, with perfect skies and the perfect amount of wind to keep things pleasant. She steps into this role because she must. Because as mother, she believes that doing so will make her… My mother and I are headed to the magical pink Candyland of Dallas, Texas, where Mary Kay consultants, directors and internationally renowned bedazzled, Pepto-pink juggernauts known as Nationals converge

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Time is Different in Toronto

Udochukwu Chidera — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 04:00:35 +0000

Japa – Migration (Noun) Origin: Yoruba, meaning ‘to run swiftly’ ‘to escape’ Translated from the Nigerian Urban Dictionary The year after the shoot-out cut short the lives of innocent protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos marked the period of mass exodus of many Nigerian citizens. That same year, my cousin was kidnapped. I didn’t wait to be the next victim stuffed in the back of a car like a sack of potatoes; I left. I packed my two suitcases with my dreams, jackets and thermal wears, and was embraced by the cold Canadian wind that rushed into my nostrils

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Bleu Rivers

Love makeda — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 04:00:35 +0000

Sometimes I close my eyes and all I can see is me in Bleu—me in his arms, me in his whispers, me in his dreams. I try not to close my eyes. Try not to forget that I vowed to escape the smallness of this island. It suffocates me. Mama, the most. She blames me for Papi’s death. It happened three years ago when I was only fourteen. And I couldn’t have stopped Papi’s dinghy from getting lost at sea anymore than Mama could. Still, if she was the hammer, I was her nail. She never failed to hit me

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Mother’s Revenge

Baby Angel — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 04:00:33 +0000

The last time my mother broke my heart, my brother and his college friends had the pleasure of witnessing it. We were all gathered in the common area of his shared apartment in upstate New York. Of course, she had traveled from Africa to celebrate her favorite child’s birthday. As the youngest child of an African mother, his being the most preferred was almost inevitable. “It’s not that your brother is my favorite. You are just harder to love,” she said in a manner intended to be perceived as coy. When two or more siblings and at least one parent

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Unexpected Gratitude

Iyesatta Massaquoi Emeli — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 04:00:36 +0000

It was the year Twitter launched, the Human Genome Project published the final chromosome sequence, and the FIFA World Cup competition saw Italy victorious. I was graduating from an Emergency Medicine residency program. My life was good; I had proclaimed as much during my graduation dinner. When it was my turn to give a speech—I was clad in a fitted bright cocktail dress— I asked, “Don’t I look fabulous?” I said these words to a roomful of colleagues with whom I had worked thirty-six-hour shifts, all of us garbed in loose scrubs held at the waist by a drawstring. We

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Stay Right Where You Are

Sharon L. DuPree — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 15:46:37 +0000

My daughter is five. We’re standing in the living room of our apartment, across from the marble fireplace we never use because the flue is stuck closed. We’ve just come in from school and errands; secured dinner from our favorite Chinese restaurant—chicken fried rice, shredded beef szechuan style, pan fried pork dumplings. We’re both cheerful, our faces flush from racing each other up three flights of stairs. Our coats are strewn all over the backs of kitchen chairs. As I’m unpacking our dinner, my daughter, out of nowhere, says, “Daddy and I are smart and you’re not.” Stunned frozen for

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What Writing a Romance Novel Out of Spite Taught Me About the Fictional Man

Desiree Winns — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 04:00:53 +0000

I started my romance novel the same way I started most academic papers: with a burning research question and just a bit of rage. The question was this: why can’t Black women be rescued or wanted in romance? I was twenty years old in the time of Disney Princess remakes and men are trash rants, a moment when white feminism was insisting that women didn’t need to be saved. My life at that moment was a dreary dichotomy of taking online classes and orders at a chicken restaurant. I would have certainly welcomed being saved from the boredom of making

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To Decay

Leandra Marshall — Mon, 26 May 2025 21:05:19 +0000

Clutching three rotten apples in a single hand, she stood at the screen door and waited for the shifting dark clouds to veil the relentless sun. There was a summer storm sliding over the valley, promises of flash floods providing bittersweet reprieve from the heat. Sweat dried sticky on the back of her neck even in the shade of the narrow entryway and something prickled there, all the peach fuzz rising at once. She licked her chapped lips, tasting his spit and waxy remnants of saccharine strawberry lip balm. With one bare foot wedged in the gap under the screen

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Iya Agba’s Kenkele

Temitope Famakinwa — Mon, 19 May 2025 22:56:36 +0000

It was a terribly hot September. Though it drizzled now and then, the thick stagnant air of summer refused to give way to the tranquility of autumn. Stubborn tourists trotted the streets in shorts and sleeveless tops, undeterred while the Locals wandered about, glancing at the lifeless grey skies with frustration and concern. That afternoon, nothing deserved pleasantry. The outdoor tent of Sobiro restaurant was packed with a cluster of sweaty impatient customers. Habibat took their orders with practiced grace, resisting the urge to blow herself with her order pad. She considered dashing to the toilet to take off her

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