January 2010
5 posts
Right Now, I'll be Right Now
When we’re in the truck with the windows rolled down I can feel the earth press up against my skin. I feel it strongest when she stretches her arms out and tickles my cheeks; when she messes with my ponytail and whips it around like the end of a mermaid. I feel the earth best when we drive home from school.
Papa picks me up after I wait for three or five minutes at the curb by the Hodgey...
Daddy is a Drug Lord.
Harlem was hot in the summer. The kind of hot that makes your skin sticky and ice cream messy in your hands. In the park, I’d sit and watch bullets of moisture gather and slide down my brown toothpick legs. Kids my age ran around, kicking up chunky mulch, dirtying their shoes, messin’ in the hydrants. They’d laugh and giggle and not worry about a thing. I wasn’t much like kids my age. I was...
The Lottery of Miracles
Prayer time is my favorite time. It’s the honesty; the getting down to what really needs to be said that I like. It’s that feeling of helplessness and neediness that only seems appropriate in front of God. But when people pray for miracles, when that happens, I can’t help but cringe a little. Fear rises up within me. Fear that God won’t do what we’re asking Him to do, and if He doesn’t do what...
“Concern for appearance might be the American original sin; it goes right along with fake furs, paste jewelry, sawdust hot dogs and deceptive advertising. Such self-deception is subtle, even for a while relatively harmless. But the temptation to settle for looking good while everything is falling apart inside can be dangerous. After a long season of accepting appearances for reality, a...
Like in the Books: The House of Kiefer.
I sat in the white wooden chair while Samia cut my hair asymmetrical. Hair fell from my head to join dog hair that already rested on the desperate-for-a-sweep floor. My roommates looked unapologetically with each snip. It was my Rihanna phase- let’s leave it at that. And my thoughts came like this, “My dad’s going to hate this. People at school will think I’m strange.” My dad never saw my hair,...