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
Today is our long day. We need to drive nearly 200 miles to cross state lines. Mom and I take shifts, plying the other with an endless stream of gritty Community Coffee and sleeves of Donette’s. I notice the minute we cross
Quickly and carefully, I crossed the street with my best friend at the time. Her name was Jalia, a tall and skinny girl I’d skip class with to play Nintendo between the tiled bathroom walls. Jalia was an older sister I never
Virginia Woolf once said: Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money. // In fifth grade, I had a crush on Kevin O’Halloran. He was
Luz had faked a pregnancy in order to get the attention of her ex-boyfriend Johnny Rivera and kept it going for six months. Not only had other students been whispering that she was full of shit, but now, in her second trimester,
The e-mail message was as jarring as the sound of an alarm clock on Saturday morning. Especially since I didn’t know the sender and was in no way expecting it. A little bit of contextual background may be helpful here. I enjoy
About time, Rose grumbled under her breath as she snatched up her two half-filled garbage bags from the ground and made her way toward the front of the line. Even with an ankle-length skirt on, there was no escaping the scorching midday
I am going to tell you the sad pathetic truth about me. I am a foster child and nobody loves me. I made up stories about my mother when I was a child to cope with it. At some point, I decided
“Call the motherfuck….Call the….” I make out muffled screams from outside. Barely there. From the comfort of my bed, I ignore. People on the block yelling is nothing new. Under covers, face in phone, I press play on CNN’s video report of
It’s not right for a daughter to see her father naked. I’m sure my father knows this, and deep down in her heart, my mother knows this too. When she sends me to him, she doesn’t look me in the eye, she
I. Rose stood in her tiny, cluttered living room, trying to remember why she was there. “Go brush your teeth and find your glasses,” she said out loud, before following her own command: first to the bathroom to brush her teeth, then
My eyes shot open. I must’ve dozed off. My head was pounding. Perhaps it was the bright, fluorescent light in this cold, white, sterile box of a room. I was sitting on a black plastic chair against the wall. The entire wall
I hope tomorrow will bring a better you, better me I know that we’ll show this world we got more we could be Tevin Campbell’s soft, pubescent voice hummed through the radio. I hesitated to listen. On that day, I just didn’t
Many days we passed Miss Daisy’s house and yelled hi. She would usually call us up on her front porch to visit. She would be sitting in her rocking chair fanning flies from her face and intermittently wiping sweat from her wrinkleless
Has it happened to you? Maybe you’re scrolling through Twitter searching… no, damn near begging for a meme of happiness… then BOOM! Under your thumb is a video of some racist cop assaulting a Black person for a reason as small as
