I always like summer best you can eat fresh corn from daddy's garden and okra and greens and cabbage and lots of barbecue and buttermilk and homemade ice-cream at the church picnic
and listen to gospel music outside at the church homecoming and you go to the mountains with your grandmother and go barefooted and be warm all the time not only...
When my dad walks into a room, or down the street, he inches up on me silent as shadow, and I don't know he's there until I feel his hug. Sometimes when he is near I might even hear his heart beat— but never his quiet feet.
Up till now, the math of my life has been pretty simple: friends plus family plus sports. What more could I ask for, right? But lately, my outside has been changing and my inside keeps telling me more is on the way. Trouble is, I'm not sure I'm ready.
My body is perfect and imperfect and black and girl and big and thick hair and short legs and scraped knee and healed scar and heart beating and hands that hold and voice that bellows and feet that dance and arms that embrace and my momma’s eyes and my daddy’s smile and my grandma’s hope and
We all have the same little bones in our foot twenty-six with funny names like navicular. Together they build something strong— our foot arch a pyramid holding us up. The bones don’t get casts when they break. We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for...
I come home, feet about to bleed from angry stomping. “Boy!” says Mom. “Quit making all that racket.” But what does she expect when, day after day, haters sling words at me like jagged stones designed to split my skin? I retreat to my room, collapse on the bed, count, “One. Two....
I am hardly ever able to sort through my memories and come away whole or untroubled. It is difficult to sift through the stones, the weighty moments and know which is rare gem, which raw coal, which worthless shale or slate. So, one by one, I drag them across the page and...
I am a door of metaphor waiting to be opened. You’ll find no lock, no key. All are free to enter, at will. Simply step over the threshold. Remember to dress for travel, though. Visitors have been known to get carried away.Illustration by Shadra Strickland