Friday Feature: Grace Morse

Grace Morse (she/they) is an essayist from New Orleans, Louisiana, currently living in

Galicia, Spain. Her work can be found in various publications and has been recognized

as a finalist for CRAFT Literary Magazine’s 2023 Flash Prose Prize and BRINK Literary

Journal for Hybrid Writing Award in 2024. Morse is the winner of the BRINK’s 2025

Emerging Writer Fellowship in Hybrid Writing award, with their essay-in-archives

forthcoming in the Spring 2026 journal. A scholar of Spanish and English literature and

international studies, Morse was a 2025 Fulbright Open Study/Research and Creative &

Performing Arts Semifinalist. They earned their MFA in Nonfiction from the University

of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, where they also received teaching and writing

awards from the department and the Graduate College. Beyond the classroom, she had

the privilege of collaborating with arts institutions such as The Englert Theatre and

Porchlight Literary Arts Centre, where they were the 2023-2024 Nonfiction

Writer/Teaching Fellow-in-Residence and a 2025 instructor of memoir and ekphrasis

respectively.

Higher Power

Deep in Gringolandia, I shivered in front of the white security guard at the discoteca. Against my better judgment, I didn’t choose to wear a jacket to protect me from the cold, Quiteño air as Ecuador’s Top 50 playlist bled into the streets. His body acted like a barricade, blocking the club’s front entrance while he traced the edge of my driver’s license. Qué hermosa foto, he said, gripping the plastic. He observed the seventeen-year-old version of me: straight posture, floral shirt, relaxed hair. In front of him, I was slump-shouldered, newly twenty, donning Fulani braids. Beyond him, lights flashed rainbows.

The wind cocooned us. The guard put my ID on a metal weighing device. He waited to read the weight of my ID from the scale, eyes landing on my nipples, which were hard and brown beneath my cheap tank top. The scale beeped, and his eyebrows bunched in confusion or frustration. Little pools of tears formed at the corners of my eyes. It was fucking cold. All the travel blogs I read about Ecuador mentioned the spring-like weather that the country is blessed with due to its position on the equator. Coming from New Orleans, I didn’t appreciate the nuance of the seasons; I knew sopping heat, I knew merciful heat, and I knew the kind of heat that masqueraded as chill. February in Quito offered cool days, rainy days, and cooler evenings.

Fractures of colorful light illuminated a broad silhouette. I heard his voice before

I saw him:

Hola, preciosa. ¿Quieres divertirte o qué?

Of course I did. That was the reason I came there, alone, to one of the city’s most popular bars. I had done my due diligence, which is to say I scoured Yelp reviews, and found a chorus of similar praises; locals and travelers agreed that the three-story bar wasn't a great place to do questionable things with friendly strangers to pop music.

Though not entirely visible from the ground floor, there was a set of stairs tucked beside a back wall that led to three more floors with bars, televisions, couches, and dark rooms with doors that locked.

Mira su ID, the guard said to the man I could not see, the only person who seemed willing to help me. ¿Es falsa, verdad?

Cállate, the newly visible man, reprimanded the guard. Déjala pasar.

I was pulled towards him, and the top of my torso grazed his wide, welcoming chest. My body bounced back, gaze averted. He winked, and then I noticed the row of tiny, cropped curls that spiraled from his head. Flashlight in his hand, he asked for my purse.

Mi bolsita? I asked.

Sí, mi vida. I opened the mouth of my bag, and he inspected it lazily. Later, I found my ID tucked into the inside flap of my purse like a gift.

Gracias, I said, before I became bathed in the light.

+

Going to a dance club is intimidating even when the club isn’t at full capacity. Drinking didn’t interest me much in the U.S., but I felt relief when the pretty bartender offered two-for-five rum and Cokes. I accepted the first drink and disappeared it. There were small, circular tables at the opposite end of the room near the dance floor. Groups of girlfriends, business executives, and other university students congregated near the DJ booth. Behind them, a staircase curled upwards towards the second floor. There was an opportunity to initiate conversation with any person in that crowd; no language barrier that could stop me from small talk. What glued me to my seat was something complicated, internal, too strong to be unlodged by shitty rum or anxiety or the double-bind of the truth: I was an exchange student that nobody knew. I had the potential to be anyone, and I was also nobody. Nearly all the time, I felt alone.

Three drinks in, the Coke’s sugar stopped overpowering the rum. My bones were jello. I couldn’t see him until he was beside me: the man who saved me earlier. He rested his weight on my table beside the bar, disrupting its gravity as it tilted towards me. My empty drink glasses slid; he caught them, his honey fingers splayed in front of me. Facts: his name was Geraldo. He was sorry that his coworker gave me a hard time. Racista, he said, the word slipping between his teeth. He wanted to know if I was okay, if I was waiting on friends.

Sí, gracias. Ya están en camino, I lied. I was lucky enough to have a few friends, but I had ensured that none of them would be joining me that night.

Leaning closer, he pointed behind him to another wooden staircase decorated with twinkle lights, their glow making the club softer than it really was. He worked up there, he said, and I could come get him if I needed anything.

Qué bien, I tried to say, slippery and slinking towards tipsiness. He laughed, and suddenly, being on the receiving end of his smile made me feel beautiful.

As he walked away, I willed the room to stop spinning. The shards of club light looked kaleidoscopic. I freed myself from the teetering chair, so clearly not built to hold a plus-sized body. The ice cubes that once appeared in my glass had been subdued into wimpy puddles. A group of young people, probably students at my host university, approached my newly available table. At nearly 11 PM, there was no telling what the room would look like in an hour, or even half an hour, but my focus was on making sure that I didn’t miss any steps as I ambled up to the second floor, towards this stranger, hoping his attention could save me from whatever I was actually running from.

+

Hours before I made it to the club, I wiped a tissue from my host mom Elisa’s desk and cleaned her Jesus figurine’s brown, circular head. He hung above the bed in her guest room, arms pinned perpendicular from his legs, and sometimes the dust from the ceiling fan coated him in a fluffy, gray smog. Once the figure was clean, I went towards my dresser and gave her angelitos the same treatment, careful not to smudge their naked, porcelain bodies with my thumbprints.

Between Jesus, the angels, and all the other religious figures spread throughout the apartment, I often joked that I felt surveilled at all times. Elisa went to Misa every Sunday. When I left her third-story apartment to go to the university, I stooped down so she could kiss my cheek and give me my daily Dios te bendiga. When her sisters’ husbands asked me if I went to church while we ate churrasco at Sunday lunch, I told them that my family belonged to an African-American church. Though confident in my Spanish, spoken by distant ancestors on my father’s side and refined at school, it was difficult to explain the intricacies of the Southern, Black Baptist church, including the reasons why I didn’t actually consider myself a part of it despite my father being a reverend. My feelings toward God felt simple: I was grateful for my life and the opportunity to exist, and I believed that a force higher than me was responsible for my presence on Earth. I didn’t mind stretching my mouth wide, embracing that open vowel, calling that spirit “God”. But I resented the pressures and performance of organized religion as I had experienced it. I hated that the church I attended in my early teenage years had different rules for people of different genders, that each structure felt inherently patriarchal. I didn’t understand the duality of how I could be unworthy, sinful, inherently flawed, and yet also beautiful, a marvel, by virtue of being shaped in God’s image. I felt judged by the elder members of the church, which is to say, the vast majority of the congregation. Church was the first place that I learned how to exit my body, and that severing, though protective, was not one I was ever meant to master.

But at the time, my feelings about God didn’t matter; the night I went to that club, I had to appeal to her Ecuadorian Jesus and the rest of the divine entourage because I was doing everything common sense (and the university orientation) said not to do: going somewhere alone as a woman, at night, hoping to hook up with a stranger. My host mom and I had a wonderful relationship, but that Friday evening was the first time I had lied to her about my plans. When I told Elisa I was going to meet some friends at an art gallery, she insisted I bring an unsexy coat to keep myself warm. It didn’t go with the outfit, but I took it and kissed her on her wrinkled cheek. Inside the doorway to her apartment, she prayed for me. Walking down the steps into the frosty Quito night, I would like to think that I said a small prayer for her, too.

+

Upstairs on the second floor of the discoteca, squeezed into a stall in the women’s bathroom, Geraldo insisted he was too big for condoms. He had brought me another drink that night, frowning each time I sipped it instead of chugging. We had chatted about where we were from and my time in Ecuador before making out on the patio, each kiss enthusiastic and inexact. To avoid being caught on the cameras, he brought me to the bathroom. His big brown hands explored the expanse of my lower back before he positioned himself behind me. My top was on the floor, or resting on the top of the toilet, or wedged between the wall and the tampon receptacle. A floor below us, the DJ sloppily switched to another song, each beat banging against the walls. I stiffened, and he unlatched his mouth from my nipple to meet my gaze.

¿Qué pasa, princesa? ¿Todo bien?

He tickled my chin, and I laughed uncomfortably. It was hot, and I was tired, and whatever fantasy I had about desirability being a balm for loneliness had dissolved. I wanted to escape the feelings of isolation I had known so closely during my study abroad. People responded to and made assumptions about my Black, fat (reclamatory), tattooed body in a myriad ways. Often, I oscillated between feelings of invisibility and hypervisibility. Almost always, I felt alone.

Contéstame, baby, he said. His handsome face was still smiling, but his voice had been laced with a command.

Claro, guapo. Todo bien, I said. He proceeded to flirt with the hem of my jeans before removing them and christening my hips with kisses. Without actively deciding to, my body gave my mind permission to wander, and I floated away. When I returned to myself, he had cleaned himself up, zipping up his pants, half grinning.

He kissed me for the final time and I stood there. I believe I offered my cheek. My head hurt from all the times he had gripped the crown of my afro in his fists. When his manager texted him asking where he was, he helped me pull my shirt on. His movements were suddenly gentle, and I leaned into that softness.

Me gustas mucho, he said. He asked for my cellphone, and I recited a string of numbers I simultaneously hoped were and were not correct; my phone had died, and I still had not memorized my Ecuadorian phone number. I asked him to call me a cab and was so grateful that his “yes” was unconditional. Briefly, I wondered if this could be the start of a new relationship. Perhaps there was a world where we could date, and put this night behind us, chalk it up to some drunken night that yielded some clandestine relationship. I could learn, I thought as we stood outside the club doors, how to like his roughness. Shouldn’t I have felt flattered? At my PWI back in the United States, people flirted with my white friends and ignored me. Though students at my host university were outwardly very kind, my experience in social situations was similar. When Geraldo reached for my hand and kissed it, I felt somehow lucky: it didn’t matter if our time together was good or bad, but rather that I had been chosen for it. He had seen me, at least some version of me, and found favor with her.

The cab driver who eventually arrived was an old, sullen man. He spent the ride commenting on my body, and when I struggled to unbuckle my seatbelt, he kissed me. I don’t remember how I got back to my apartment lobby, or how long his hand lingered on my leg. But there is the squeal of tires, a red ribbon slicing down the street, a fleeting fear that bubbled inside of me as I watched his cherry car drive away.

+

The morning after my night with Geraldo, the weather was warm. The neighborhood looked characteristically beautiful all bathed in that aureate light. Elisa had wrapped herself in an expensive scarf and tiptoed down the stairs so her sister could drive them to church. I had tried to go with her once to be respectful, but I usually spent Sundays reading or hanging out with my friends, the closest of whom were also students at my home university. I texted one of them, a junior named Rebecca, and asked if she would accompany me to the farmácia. As we walked, cars passed us on the sidewalk, the rims of their cars crystallizing under the sunlight.

The pill that I needed was pink and circular. It cost about five dollars. The internet generally advised against taking two, even though the effectiveness of la píldora del día después was questionable for people who weighed over 150. I felt ashamed, not for the fact that I had been intimate, but that I had done so without the proper means to take care of myself. Pregnancy, however unlikely, was not an option. I hadn’t bothered to ask Geraldo if he got tested regularly, though I can’t imagine how that conversation would have gone or if I would have believed him. My thoughts raced and Rebecca stood beside me, offered me her hand, and helped me take deep breaths as I went to the back of the drug store to retrieve my contraception. Afterwards, we went to the grocery store, where she bought me a Gatorade and a slice of cheese pizza. I wouldn’t take it on an empty stomach, she said, her voice sweet and slow. Neither of us was religious, so it felt strange to ask if we could pray. Moreover, I didn’t know who I was praying to: I spent years knowing what I didn’t believe in, but I hadn’t yet had the time or space to discover what I believed in. I only had that one word, and I repeated it to myself as I walked back to my host mom’s apartment: God, God, God. Once in a while, I inserted another word: please. Weeks passed, and when my period came, I felt euphoric. After I had returned to my campus in North Carolina, still remembering the anxiety of taking the pill and hearing conflicting information about its efficacy for people over a certain weight, I went to a Black gynecologist at our Campus Health Services and requested a referral for birth control. After consulting with her, we agreed on an IUD and scheduled an appointment. I had never seen one before, so she showed it to me: it was small, T-shaped, tubular. The insertion was relatively painless and covered by my student insurance. A dear friend, Sally, picked me up afterwards and drove me home, offering me a baggie of tea from her cupboard and some herbs I could boil on the stove.

+

A month and a half later, hunched over a nail salon’s toilet in some fancy part of Oakland, I lifted my head. I had moved to California for the summer to do an internship and spend time with my aunt, who had lived in the Bay for some years and told me beautiful stories about how great it was for Black creatives. We had been walking along Lake Merritt when I felt unsoothable stomach pain. I had tried to ignore it, opting to get my nails done while my aunt and my mom enjoyed a rooftop nearby. With half a hand of acrylics, I asked to use the bathroom and immediately got sick. My body pulsed, my head hot. Eventually, when the sickness stopped, I forced myself to look around the bathroom. As I bundled some toilet paper and cleaned up, there was a small white object in the mouth of the toilet bowl. Turning the light on, I saw it more clearly: beneath the harsh overhead light, resting in the toilet’s mouth, was my IUD. It floated peacefully in the water, looking almost like a cross. I reached for it, and it slipped away, sinking deeper and deeper towards the bottom.

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