“You were ashes.” As I stood in the doorway of my sister Everette’s bedroom just past midnight, tears were warm and sticky…
Jocelyn found it hard to focus on the date, although it had been the only thing occupying her mind until she got…
Sydnee glanced at her phone and saw a text from her mother, Marilyn. Sometimes she wished she had never taught her mother…
“Again! And sit up straight! You’re slouching.” Naledi repositioned herself on the stool in front of the piano. Her legs, dangling, were…
Shattering glass echoes in my ears, snapping my head up from my phone. Right across the street, the front window of Diaz’s…
Mama always said the Devil is a lie. I remember thinking that before it happened. But Mama was wrong. The Devil isn’t…
We arrived with our gods, walked them into the soil and braided totems into our hair. Distance and time made memory a…
“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…
I text Alicia that I’m outside and when she responds, I’m already ringing the doorbell. the text was just a courtesy. whether…
On a nimbus of decay, it emerged from the dark recesses of her closet and crept spiderlike toward her threadbare rug. Humid…
It was a bitterly cold November evening, fifteen minutes or so before closing when the young man first walked into Tia Adelina’s…
They were floating, flying in tandem, punctuated by the last of the year’s sunlight, perfectly together. Nothing could separate them. The voices…
Cast aside the bloody hands of the self-righteous for they brittle and collapse amongst the bones of saints. The tree leaves…
Sometimes she thought it must be loneliness that made her see things. She could see the dark lord’s face peering down from…
The first time she noticed, it was purely accidental. A quick glance while reaching for a towel on the nearby rack. The…
The winds bouncing off the gulf swaddle Fleur’s bare head as she stands at its fringes, and almost with the same delicacy…