The man standing in the front of the room was wearing multicolored swim trunks, tank top, flip-flops, sunglasses, saying “Bonjour” as people entered, then “take a seat, please.”
“Your mom’s got something to tell you boys.”
It was a cozy room with plush chairs, but no amount of throw pillows would make me comfortable.
Words flew free and wild, no safety net, no rules, no brakes.
On the beach we taste salt when we speak.
As our ten-car train cranked up the 105-foot-tall chain-lift hill for the ninety-degree one-hundred-foot drop, I regretted hopping on.
Two eyes, haunting. Ten fingers, gripping. You hike your Elmo backpack higher.
Each morning, I see my blurry face in the shaving mirror that you left suction-cupped to my shower wall.
My grandma is obsessed with Psalm 24.
I sway back and forth anxiously while keeping my eyes riveted to the scene unfolding on our 65-inch TV.
"You have cancer." Three words no one expects to hear in their lifetime.
The beady-eyed beaky bird with glossy silver-grey coat pounced on any crumbs I tossed on my windowsill.
There are scenes from life that imprint on your mind permanently.
My mom's butt was high in the air and her head was buried in the blankets.
It was cold in the National Cathedral that rainy night forty-one years ago, and smelled of stale air and incense.
My feet can't reach the water where waves have caressed me before. I stretch to touch her with my toes.
Ms. Cookie Paul, a black businesswoman in our small Texas town, mentored us black girls.
I peer at the prices in the gas station and comment that chocolate shouldn’t cost so much.
Unidentified pain wakes me, though awareness filters slowly.
With three school-aged children, our family squeezed in a trip over winter break despite the expected frigid weather.