“Tell me a story,” I ask.
“Tell me a story,” I ask.
Teri Boland commanded two friends to chase after me during recess.
I opened the refrigerator and crawled inside.
Reading what Natasha inscribed on the new mug she made—Every time you learn something new, you become a better version of yourself—I learned something new about her.
The bell chides my lateness, coffee spills from my cup, and papers scatter to the floor.
You are the pepper shaker and I am a napkin.
I, Lekeila, run to dampen the flames as our spaceship hurtles toward the surface of the moon.
At night lying naked on my bed, age eleven or twelve, breeze through the window screen cooling on my skin.
The buskers ran late like the husbands buying cheap chocolate boxes across the street.
My father won't reconcile with the sea, though he grew up on an island unafraid of rogue waves, of hurricanes.
The evening unfolds as all others—light fades and a quiet falls like weight.
Off of 51st Avenue, we walk along the train tracks, balancing, bumping into each other on purpose just to feel the touch.
My nose still feels the burn of the smoke from my grandma’s cheap cigarette as it wafted through the air of her white 1994 Mercury Sable.
I held my breath. Our foreheads touched on my pillow.
I’ve waited with you all three years of your life, as letters arranged on your tongue searching for order.
When Covid strikes, my daughter is in Kent on a university fellowship.
The oncology nurse had a list and was lecturing us about the foods that chemotherapy was about to take off the menu.
I let my mother bake the cake, which could be a treat, but she halves the sugar, substitutes oil with applesauce, skips the salt …
We were in the spaceship room, a place for kids in the pediatric ward to float away between tests and rests.
There are many things I could do right now: take out the trash, water your plants, unload the washing machine, wash the dishes, massage your shoulders, vacuum the room.