Someplace I Didn’t Know
for Laura Trussell cw: brief mention of self-harm We were young, all done with college—either finished or dropped out. We lived on one of the long, treeless streets of Baltimore that flow down to the harbor in a three-story, five-bedroom rowhouse that the landlady had not raised the rent …
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Sonny Boy
cw: abuse Grandmother always has a crochet hook in her hand. Yellow yarn in a loop, memory beaten into muscle. The day I am born, in photos taken on cheap disposables at the hospital, blue yarn knotted into a baby blanket. When I am sixteen, the same color from the …
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Apple and the Destination Wedding
The month before my brother’s wedding, my roommate adopted a hairless cat. “Adopted” is a generous word. He obtained a cat—off Craigslist, I think—from some guy whose daughter both begged for and lost interest in the cat within two months. My roommate was kind of a hoarder. Newspapers …
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Myrmecomorphy
Fern stands in the church pew wearing her floral Sunday dress. Large peonies blossom across the fabric. Her soprano voice is absorbed by the congregation’s rendition of “As the Deer.” The chapel is full. A fan wafts sweat and rose oil in circles above the parishioners. Fern mindlessly rubs …
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A Tortilla
Tonight, I consummate. The ceremony itself is discreet, and the only people in the church’s kitchen are my mother and I. The anticipating groom the size of my child eye, only maize dough between my mother’s index finger and thumb. Instructed by a nod, I let cold water …
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West
Then she asked how long it would take to get there. As if we’d never made the trip before. “Just a bit longer,” I said, my eyes firmly on the road ahead. She kicked the back of my seat—not an accident, so I ignored it and turned the …
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Ride
Clumps peel from the void, and cloudy tunnels of light lengthen into one another. Gold dapples my chest. A ray dries my open mouth. I huff dust and ash. Ponds fizz in my lungs. A vein revs over my heart. Angles squirm up my sternum, puff my neck, …
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Sassafras
She was at the kitchen table watching the microwave clock leave midnight. Ron had promised he’d be back by half past eleven. Before he left, he’d said, “I’m too old to be out past my bedtime.” It wasn’t a joke. Nothing about his leaving had been a joke. Her …
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Red Mansions
The blissful resent each moment for ending. This sentiment only partly explains Karim’s decision to stick a skewered kidney through the fly of his jeans and point it at bewildered passersby along the Tonghui River. As a foreign devil, a young Black one no less, he was inured to …
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Praise Exercise
Feb 28th: Good job! In peace, an old woman whispers sweet nothings to help a flower bloom: yes my love, grow, grow, grow, slow and steady, you’re doing such a good job, I love—the train halts to a stop. We step out into dim, streetlamp sun. Mar 3rd: Good …
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