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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. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Dr. Cheryl R. Hopson is the John P. Fishwick Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. She has published essays on Alice Walker, Rebecca Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and U.S. Black Feminism. Her poetry collection In Case You Get This (2023) was published by Finishing Line Press. In 2024, Reaktion Books published her biography Zora Neale Hurston . Alice Walker’s Mary Agnes Speaks They used to call me Squeak until I learned to speak back. Been singing, and writing my way to a me I can feel, and see, and to a life less riddled with stress and strife, you know? And my baby- child. No “Papa’s maybe” but Harpo’s – This Mama knows. People talk, honey. Get your money. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Marchaé Grair (they/she) is a storyteller, spiritual seeker, and facilitator making meaning of life’s liminal spaces. They are an alum of residencies and workshops presented by Tin House, Anaphora Arts, Voices of our Nations (VONA), the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and Roots. Wounds. Words, where they were also a writer-in-residence. Marchaé’s work embodies their Black, queer, nonbinary, disabled, and polyamorous experiences. They are working on a queer, young adult romance novel loosely based on their life and other essays about identity. When they are not writing, they are rewatching their favorite rom-coms, downloading the new Sims expansion pack, or laughing a little too loudly at their own jokes. She/Not Her Before you fly, you always pack your clothing first because clothes take up almost all of your suitcase. After all, you are a Taurus Venus and never know when a surprise special occasion will call for sequins. And if forced to choose, you will stuff your suitcase with that just-in-case little black dress or those just-in-case little black briefs before you pack your migraine medicine or allergy pills. You stare at the edges of your carry-on suitcase as if they will magically expand, but the black zippered lining attaching the metallic blue, hard cover to the soft, gray inside doesn't budge. You remember the day you bought this carry-on from T.J. Maxx. You were in the middle of a travel spree; in January, you’d gone to Chicago to see one of your platonic loves, then driven to Montreal to vacation with your partner. Your last stop would be in the Dominican Republic to vacation with your long-distance lover. Your pregnant wife was traveling to California at the same time you were traveling to the Dominican Republic. You already felt bad enough for having needs, including needs that meant loving and fucking other people, so you certainly weren’t going to ask your wife if you could take the only household carry-on with four wheels. You both needed her to have that win. So you went to T.J. Maxx and walked around the suitcase section for fifty minutes. This was not the fancy, downtown, two-story T.J. Maxx that mesmerized you when you got lost years ago leaving your new job in downtown Boston. This was a reasonable T.J. Maxx in the Boston suburbs with a suitcase section so small that you missed it multiple times when you first scanned the store. Yet, it still took you almost an hour to browse through the carry-on suitcases because you didn’t know which one looked like it was made for someone like you. If this were the you who used to work downtown, you would have taken one look at the brown, faux-leather purse and carry-on hybrid bag in the corner and called it a night. Back then, you had a work wardrobe, and it was all discounted, from women’s department stores, and business casual. You were a young Bette Porter if she grew up in small-town Ohio and found her way East instead of West. You posted a now-hidden Instagram photo on your first day of work downtown in your favorite outfit: a black, form-fitting, Calvin Klein dress and a complementary Calvin Klein red and black blazer with pointed shoulders. Your hair was crocheted into long hair extensions that were worsening your then undiagnosed alopecia, but the braids made you feel beautiful. This version of you only showed up to work in an assortment of Fenty lipstick shades; Covid and gender confusion were years away, so you weren’t masking.  Present you hasn’t bought a purse in years, unless you count additions to your collection of tasteful   fanny packs. Past you decides against the faux leather purse and other carry-ons like it. Past you notices pastel Jessica Simpson carry-ons close by. You imagine yourself rolling pastel luggage behind you while wearing a hoodie, baggy jeans, and a t-shirt, and you shake your head. Your eyes land on a carry-on with a picture of a white businessman on the cardboard label of the branding. This carry-on is on a central display set apart from the other suitcases, so it must be special. You’re not exactly sure what your gender will be when you fly, but you know it won’t be white businessman. The other carry-ons to the left of the smiling white man whisper to you, “You don’t fly in first class, and you know you can’t even afford first class carry-ons at T.J. Maxx.” You’re unsure why these imaginary voices are so rude, but like most Bostonians, they are both rude and  correct, so you keep circling the suitcases. You stop in front of the metallic, ice-blue carry-on. You can see yourself wearing anything from sweatpants to a dress with this suitcase in tow. You know you will pack more feminine clothes this trip because you’re going to the Dominican Republic, an unfamiliar place, and unfamiliar places always bring out the woman in you. It’s not that you’re uncomfortable in women’s clothes; you especially love your summer dresses that are all cleavage on top and tradwife from the waist down. You just hate yourself a little bit for defaulting to ultra feminine clothes when you travel and need a shield—whether it‘s protection from men who are nicer to women they desire or protection from confused stares when people can’t quite guess if you’re a tomboy or a trans boi or a lesbian or a middle-aged Black woman trying to channel Billie Eilish.  You look at your phone and message your friend who you promised to visit after a quick trip to T.J. Maxx. You’re “coming, promise!” You think about a dinner you had with this friend years ago at a mediocre neighborhood bar and restaurant that is now a Life Alive. You’re glad it was still a bar then because you needed that tequila-based liquid courage with the pink salt rim to tell your friend you were using additional pronouns. You wished you could have also purchased liquid amnesia because your friend responded by saying nonbinary people were only in the cultural conversation because women weren't given enough room to be butch or more masculine. You said that wasn’t how it worked, then swallowed your tequila cocktail and your pride and changed the subject. You imagine yourself having more tequila-infused conversations about gender in the Dominican Republic, but this time, it would be with your lover who you met as a woman in 2010. She may still think of you that way since your body’s only gotten softer and rounder with time. She calls you beautiful, and you love it and believe her, but you wish she called you handsome sometimes, too, because your partner does that, and it makes you feel alive. You wonder if anyone who knew you fifteen years ago will ever think of you as the gender-bending switch you know yourself to be inside your head and beneath other people’s tangled sheets. You love your tender places, but you refuse to be reduced to those places alone just because you live in a Black, fat, soft body. The world expects you to mother it, but you’re not interested in your future child calling you mother, let alone being the whole world’s mammy. You understand your resistance to motherhood will be a one-way ticket to erasure in your child’s life; nurses and doctors already don’t acknowledge you during your wife’s prenatal care appointments because you’re not carrying the baby, and you’re not a man, so they don’t know what they should say to you, so they say nothing at all. You snap out of daydreaming about your future rejections because you are Black in a store with aggressive surveillance. The stacked video screens greeted you before anyone said hello. You’ve been at T.J. Maxx long enough for an extra “How may I help you?” to feel like a threat. You are a Sagittarius rising, so you text your friend that you’ll be on your way home soon, not knowing how soon, soon will be and grab the metallic blue carry-on off the shelf.  You pay $92.42 then fill the carry-on with your most feminine clothing for warm weather—a red one-piece you wore on Miami Beach when you wanted to look like a Baywatch lifeguard even though you can’t swim; a too-small red bikini top that hurts to snap but makes your boobs look less 40B and more 40C so you keep wearing it; black and white bikini bottoms that just cover the belly ring you should have stopped wearing 15 years ago; a blue jumpsuit with a deep dip at the chest that makes men do a double take that you are ashamed to admit you like; the jean shorts that are sexy when they’re sitting on your hips just right but more SNL-mom-jeans skit when they’re sitting all wrong; and some plain women’s tank tops because something has to be simple. You’re glad you won’t wear shoes at the beach because it’s one less thing to pack and one less way for you to be gendered. The last clothes you select for your trip are for the departure flight. You lay this outfit on the ratty gray comforter you won’t replace because you can only afford one new bed set, and you’re not sure what kind of bedding says you’re into sex but not as often as being non-monogamous might imply. Your airport travel outfit is always the same. A classic black and white Adidas tracksuit. You started wearing Adidas in high school, another time in your life you were hoping common brand names and neutral colors would make people treat you as less menacing. You hadn’t realized then that the leap from blending in to being invisible is less leap and more soul-crushing freefall. That every time you choose a jacket, or a shoe, or a lover, or an identity just to make someone else comfortable, you get farther away from yourself, and it isn’t that easy to find your way back. Even in your teens, your deepest desire was to be understood, and you learned the hard way that it’s impossible to be known when the mainstream paints your authentic existence as dangerous. People have always been too comfortable telling you all of the things they dislike about you without you asking. Too loud. Too opinionated. Too Black. Too scary. Wrong clothes. Wrong pronouns. Wrong body. You got tired of being told you were too much, so young, you learned how to make everything from your hair to your personality less big. You fried your scalp with sodium hydroxide for decades hoping to fit in, and in exchange, you got broken edges and a broken heart. Now, your natural hair is braided into old cornrows, so you pull a silk-lined, tan hat from a messy, plastic drawer by your bedroom door and lay it by your airport uniform. You grab a sports bra and tattered, pink, Victoria’s Secret underwear, the kind of underwear you never wear in the early days of a relationship because God forbid your lovers know you own granny panties. You would have chosen your gray, black, and white Tomboy briefs, but you remember the time a bulge in your sweats and the gathering of your briefs meant getting an extended pat down from TSA, and you refrain. You will wear your black and white Hokas with the Adidas sweatsuit because you’re a sometimes woman of a certain age, and your days of wearing shoes for style instead of function ended when you gained 50 pandemic pounds and got plantar fasciitis.  The last part of your travel wardrobe ritual is choosing your airport t-shirt. You open your overcrowded top dresser drawer and push aside all of the t-shirts reminding you who you are. The homemade Marxist shirt from your upstairs neighbor. The black Beyoncé concert t-shirt because you’re not fully anti-capitalist, especially if the dance floor is calling. The Boston Dyke March cutoffs you never wear in public because you’re unsure if word reclamation translates beyond those who do the reclaiming. The discolored t-shirt you bought in downtown Cleveland the day after the Cavs broke their championship losing streak and you realized you needed to break up with your abuser. The pink shirt with the wavy font listing all the reasons you believe in abolition. Your often foggy brain reaches for the Malcolm X quote that says something about the most disrespected person in America being the Black woman. You wonder what he would say about the Black trans person. You are no Malcolm X, but your existence is also threatening because your truths might make someone else want to be free. You choose a blue fitted Adidas top and start packing your toiletries.  ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Click here to support Torch Literary Arts.

Alana Benoit , a first-generation Black American with Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Central American heritage, holds a BA from Union College, an MA from the University of York (UK), and an MFA in creative writing from the Mississippi University for Women. Her work explores Black diasporic identity, particularly for Black women, women's labor, memory, family, and mental health through her writing. Raised in Harlem and now residing in North Carolina with her family, she is currently editing her first novel and developing a poetry collection. Bottle You hear the charge—aggravated assault. You don’t remember the incident. Don’t remember holding the bottle and hitting him on the head. You just remember him grabbing you, his hands around your throat, your heart rippling through your chest, and you gasping for air. You remember him pulling on your hair, your beautiful hair, and calling you a bitch. You had just asked him if he wanted steak potatoes or shoestring fries, and he said , only a bitch, a true bitch  wouldn’t know the difference, and he grabbed you. This time, he grabbed you by your beautiful hair, right in front of her, your daughter, and it was the look on her face that triggered it, a look of complete fear and despair, a look that said mommy’s going to die, and she and her beautiful hair are going to be put in the ground for the worms, and then you blacked out. You see him sitting there, the bandage from his jawline to his eye; he’s been mutilated. He reminds you of a wounded deer that has crashed into the passenger seat of a car, fractured and inconsolable; he’s been crying. You can’t imagine him ever crying, but here he is, with tissues and shit, and you can’t believe what you’re seeing. You can’t believe that this nigga is crying. You swallow hard, hard because it comes back at first slowly, and then hits the silence —the glass bottle that you held. A Heineken, green and cold, his favorite, you held it tight, and in an instant broke the top. You broke the fucking top and flashed back to a time when you were seven, like your daughter, and a group of boys tried to trap you in a junkyard, and you picked up whatever you could. You ripped them apart, swiftly striking the biggest one — the one with the loudest mouth and most to lose — who, after the blow, ran. You get a whiff of your lawyer's cologne, woodsy and musky. It reminds you of the cologne that belonged to him, which your daughter accidentally broke on New Year's, and it takes you back to a recent memory of her. Two days ago, you were braiding her hair. She sat between your legs, and you were halfway through giving her a head full of cornrows, beautifully designed into heart shapes. “Is he coming back?” she asked suddenly. She was always very perceptive for her age. You don’t want to disappoint her, but you have to be honest. “He might,” you said. “I don’t like him; he scares me.” “I’d never let him hurt you.” “What if he hurts you?” You continue braiding her hair. One strand over the other, intricately weaving the tendrils into a majestic array with cowrie shells and brown wooden beads at the ends. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m the adult, remember.” You watch her play with the doll in her lap, braiding its curly black hair as you do hers. You can’t believe your luck to have a child so smart and lovely. “All done,” you say and show her the mirror. She looks at herself admiringly and smiles. “Thank you, mommy,” she says, and it crushes you. You look at the judge who’s speaking to you now. How do you plead? Not guilty, you say. Your lawyer, next to you, wears a gray suit with tiny pumpkin pins on his tie, looks typically disheveled and uncoordinated for a public defender. He writes something on his yellow pad and looks at you with a grim frown. You just met. He asked you two questions: what will you plead? Do you have childcare? You answered not guilty and yes, because at the time, you didn’t remember. You return his frown with one of your own, and the look says, ask for fucking bail, you goddamn broken motherfucker. You can’t believe your own fury; he’s there to help you after all, but you can’t help but wish he chose a better suit. You know he’s overworked. Too many cases. Too many bottles. But this is your life. This is her  life. You don’t know where the rage is coming from. In all your years with him, the mutilated one, you never felt rage, just a quiet contempt. You believed it was your lot. You don’t anymore. Won’t. Your lawyer speaks:  Your honor, my client has no prior history, has a daughter aged seven, and is not a flight risk. I ask that bail be waived.  The judge looks up from her notes and stares at you again. Bail is set for ten thousand dollars , she says blankly. Her heavily powdered white face is resistant to any kind of appeal. You have savings, you’ll meet the bail bondsmen, you’ll be home within a day. You look for the first time at your mother in the audience. She’s crying. She cried out, NO! when the bail was announced. You tell her it’s okay. Mommy, you say, shush. She stifles her cry with her hands. You look again at him, at his face, at the bandage that surely covers a jagged line from jaw to eye, and realize that you must have been going for the eye, and you missed, you fucking missed, because there he is still crying. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Shia Shabazz Smith is a writer-director and educator based in Oakland, California. With over 20 years of storytelling across mediums, her work centers Black voices, cultural integrity, and emotional truth. Her directorial debut, DAWN —a love story with a kiss of a sci-fi twist—is currently in post-production. As a screenwriter, her short film Curdled offers a humorous and poignant glimpse into a prenatal support group for women over 40. Starring Keke Palmer, Robinne Lee, and Chenoa Maxwell, Curdled has screened at eight international film festivals. Shia’s writing spans narrative, documentary, and animation, including I Am a King , an animated series celebrating the brilliance of Black boys. Beyond her creative work, Shia is committed to nurturing the next generation of storytellers. She has served as a recurring speaker for BAVC Media youth programs, a mentor for BAYCAT in San Francisco, and as part of the leadership team at Black Girls Film Camp. A Cave Canem Fellow and three-time Sundance Screenwriters Lab second-round advancer, Shia continues to create intentional art that transforms, heals, and liberates. She was honored as the inaugural “Spark” artist in Torch Literary Journal , recognized by established and celebrated writers. Additional honors include being named Muse of African American Poetry for the City of Alameda and premiering her one-woman show, Moments We Know , at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Shia’s work continues to evolve across film, literature, and performance, carrying forward her commitment to telling stories that embody depth, honesty, and liberation. Doll based on real people and events EXT. TONI’S APARTMENT - BALCONY - NIGHT (1975) TONI JUNIOR “TJ” (5, alert, observant) stilts her Barbie up the stairs of a milk crate makeshift “dream house.” The doll wears a wrap dress made of ribbons and cloth. TJ’s mom, TONI (25, chaotic, weary) chain-smokes; peers through binoculars at a distant DRIVE-IN THEATER SCREENING of the film, MAHOGANY. INSERT: Through binocular lenses, the scene in Mahogany plays where TRACEY (Diana Ross) screams erratically into the face of her hopeless lover, BRIAN (Billy Dee). TONI (mimics Tracey, fiery) I’m gonna be a bigger success than you can ever see! TJ (sighs) You always watch this. TONI Shhh! Toni scowls to portray “Brian.” TONI (CONT'D) (mimics Brian, intensely) Success is nothing without someone to share it with. The phone rings INSIDE. Toni stamps out her cigarette in the large, ash and cigarette-butt-filled abalone shell ashtray, opens the sliding glass door, goes INSIDE, and closes the door behind her. TJ remains on the balcony, picks up the binoculars, watches Mahogany, curiously. INT. TONI'S APARTMENT - LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS Toni races through the cluttered room, the air thick with tension and smoke. She answers the phone, paces with it. TONI Lead Engineer? That’s so exciting. Congratulations! MAN’S VOICE (O.C.) (on phone) We should celebrate. Maybe... Vegas? Toni pauses, speechlessly excited for a beat. Toni abruptly turns, remembers TJ. She marches to the sliding glass door, KNOCKS on it, GRUNTS an inaudible command with a curt finger wave. TJ puts the binoculars down, goes back to her doll play. MAN’S VOICE (O.C.) (CONT'D) (on phone) Hello? TONI I’m here. MAN’S VOICE (O.C.) (on phone) So? Toni’s gaze floats up, lands on a framed photo of her “bougie,” disapproving mother, BOSS “NANA” WILLIS (58), and her loving father, NATHANIEL “GRAMPA” (60), looking down on her. Toni stands taller, proudly lifts her chin. TJ (O.S.) (angrily) I hate you! I hate you! Toni suddenly turns to see TJ, ON THE BALCONY, shaking Barbie as if Barbie is a pissed-off Tracey from Mahogany. TJ (CONT'D) You’re a goddamn loser! TONI (sotto, sighs) Fuck. (into phone) I’ll call you back. Exasperated, Toni hangs up, whips the door open. TJ freezes. TONI (CONT'D) TJ. We gotta get packed. Everything’s about to change! The hope in Toni’s face brightens in TJ’s like contagion. INT. TONI’S APARTMENT - BEDROOM - NIGHT In their shared room, a queen bed in the center, Toni and TJ race around to get dressed and pack. Toni’s energy is chaotic; TJ’s, excited. As they talk, a MONTAGE of their life generally together flashes. - ONE NIGHT. The Two asleep in the SHARED BED. TJ (V.O.) What should we bring? - ANOTHER NIGHT. Toni exits their bedroom nearly naked. A sliver of light in the dark BEDROOM falls on TJ’s face as she watches Toni entertain a MALE GUEST IN THE LIVINGROOM. TONI (V.O.) Just enough for the weekend. - A DIFFERENT DAY. TJ sits on the floor between Toni’s legs as Toni combs TJ’s hair into ponytails adorned with BALLS and BARETTES. TJ (V.O.) (confused) So, my jumpsuit? Some shorts...? - ANOTHER NIGHT. TJ picks up beer bottles from IN THE LIVING ROOM around Toni who lays passed out on the couch in her COSMETOLOGY UNIFORM. TJ (V.O.) (confused) My purple clogs! - The Two laugh, eat bowls of sugary cereal at the BREAKFAST TABLE. TONI (V.O.) (harried) Yeah. Sure. Montage ENDS. TJ pauses, notices Toni fixes her hair, dresses up. TJ immediately brushes her unruly fro in random strokes. TONI No, Babe. Keep your jammies on. TJ Where we going? EXT. APARTMENT BUILDING - CORRIDOR - CONTINUOUS Toni’s “disco queen” ensemble is a stark contrast to TJ’s long quilted robe jacket and jammies. TJ trails in fits and skips to keep up with Toni’s brisk pace. TJ carries her Barbie and lugs a trash bag of clothes behind her. TONI You’re gonna be where I tell you to be. TJ’s expression saddens. TJ But where’re you gonna be? They stop in front of a door. Toni rolls her eyes, abruptly KNOCKS. The door swings open. CANDI (50s), a brick house, transwoman, dressed like DONNA SUMMER, checks them out. CANDI Nope. Sorry, Love. Can’t. I’m on a double shift. It’s “She Works Hard for the Money” Friday which means closeted frat boys and triple tips. TONI But... Come on, Candi. Toni nudges TJ. TJ Come on Candi. TJ smiles her sweetest smile. CANDI (to Toni) No... (to TJ) And no. (to Toni) Don’t teach her that. Sorry, I can’t. Candi closes the door. INT. TONI'S APARTMENT - NIGHT TJ plays with her doll on the couch as Toni paces, makes call after call. TONI Hey! Shell. I know it’s last minute. But, well, TJ needs somewhere to stay for the weekend. I need to-- oh... okay. No, it’s cool. I understand. She hangs up, paces, makes ANOTHER CALL. TONI (CONT'D) Hi Miss Wolfe... TJ (under her breath) She’s mean. TONI (scowls, to TJ) Shhh! (into receiver) Hi Ma’am. It’s Toni Willis. TJ’s mom... from preschool. I need to run out of town real quick. I was wondering if you could keep TJ. I need to know pretty quickly so please call me back if you can. ANOTHER CALL. TONI (CONT'D) Jenny! What’s up, Girl? What? Nothing. I’mma get it to you when I-- hello? (sotto) Bitch. Toni slams the receiver down, hangs up. TJ (pensively) I could come with you. Toni abruptly stops, her body convulsing fitfully before she drops to the floor. TJ races to her, shakes her. TJ (CONT'D) Mama? Mama... stop. It’s not funny. Okay, I don’t have to go. Toni’s limp body draws TJ to curl herself next to her mom until TJ weeps inconsolably. Suddenly, Toni bursts with laughter. TONI You are such a drama queen. Get up. They get up, sit on the couch. TONI (CONT'D) You’re such a serious kid. Lighten up. You don’t like to have fun. That’s why I need time by myself sometimes. After a beat, Toni looks again at the image of her PARENTS. She rolls her eyes, takes a deep breath. TONI (CONT'D) Grab your bag. EXT. SAN DIEGO - NIGHT Toni’s Volkswagon Beetle travels the HIGHWAYS, SHORELINE, STREETS of the city... EXT. NANA AND GRAMPA’S HOUSE - NIGHT ... parks curbside at a beautiful Spanish-style bungalow with its manicured lawn, floral landscaping, and shiny 1970 PLYMOUTH FURY parked in the driveway. INT./EXT. TONI’S VOLKSWAGON BEETLE - NIGHT Tony glances at TJ, sound asleep in the backseat. EXT. NANA AND GRAMPA’S HOUSE - NIGHT On the porch, Toni holds TJ in one arm, carries her clothes bag in the other. She sets the bag down and rings the doorbell, BREATHES DEEPLY. Nana, regal in her PEIGNOIR SET, chiffon lace long robe and nightgown, opens the door, SIGHS. Her cinnamon skin is flawless with the glow of nighttime moisturizer. Nana’s lips curl into the obligation of a smile. Her brow raises with expected disappointment. Retired Navy man Grampa, a fit good-looking “good cop” to Nana’s “bad cop,” slides past Nana, takes TJ from Toni’s arms, kisses Toni on the cheek before disappearing back into the house, TJ cradled against his chest. Toni and Nana’s conversation occurs as their SLO MO transaction happens. NANA (V.O.) What time can we expect you back? TONI (V.O.) Sunday. By six P.M. NANA (V.O.) Not a second later. Your father has work. TONI (V.O.) I know, Mah. I’ll be back. Nana takes, inspects the bag scornfully. She and Toni “air kiss” cheeks then Toni heads back for her car, tugging at her clothes, smoothing her hair insecurely. Nana watches until she gets into the car. Toni sits in her car. The light on the porch goes out. Toni weeps, then musters the energy to start the car. INT. NANA AND GRAMPA’S HOUSE - VARIOUS ROOMS - DAY A song like “April in Paris” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong plays as LIGHT pours through windows of the immaculate home that exudes care. NANA (V.O.) (dreamy whisper) Doll... Montage BEGINS - IN THE LIVINGROOM: A white SOFA sits on lush white CARPET under two large METAL PEACOCK wall hangings. - Porcelain and wooden Japanese STATUETTES and FIGURINES sit on the large mahogany credenza where the integrated record player sits. Framed wedding photos of the YOUNGER NANA AND GRAMPA, and various others with TONI and TJ. - IN NANA AND GRAMPA’S BEDROOM: Beautiful quilts on an IRON FRAMED bed. A large wooden dresser holds fancy PERFUME and COLOGNE BOTTLES, and an ORNATE JEWELRY BOX. NANA (V.O.) (dreamy whisper) Doll... - IN THE KITCHEN: while batter pours onto a hot GRIDDLE into perfectly circular hotcakes, coffee PERCOLATES. - COFFEE IS POURED; slightly creamed in one teacup and heavily creamed and sugared in the other. Montage ENDS. INT. NANA AND GRAMPA’S HOME - GUEST ROOM - CONTINUOUS Nana sits on the edge of the bed, rouses TJ from sleep. NANA (dreamy whisper) Good morning, Doll. Her Barbie tucked in next to her, TJ awakens to see Nana, sitting gracefully on the edge of the bed like a dream. NANA (CONT'D) (softly) Go ahead and get changed. We have lots to do today. The day is waiting. Nana exits to reveal a petite pink PEIGNOIR SET in her size with matching SLIPPERS. TJ gasps, quietly squeals with excitement. INT. NANA AND GRAMPA'S HOME - TV ROOM - DAY Nana and TJ sit in matching BARCALOUNGERS. TJ’s Barbie tucked in the cushion at her hip. Grampa delivers breakfast to them; fine China served on TV trays; Nana’s floral and TJ’s with cartoon characters. He turns the TV on to their favorite GAME SHOW. TJ I hope someone wins the trip to Mazatlán. NANA Yes, Doll. They clink coffee-filled teacups, daintily. INT. BEAUTY SALON - DAY The timer DINGS and the large DRYER HOODS are lifted from Nana’s and TJ’s roller-stacked heads. TJ Is it your birthday? It just feels like a special day. CLIENTS (30s-50s, Black women) in the shop SMILE. NANA You can make any day feel special. TJ YOU make every day feel special. NANA No, Doll. YOU are the one that makes special, special. STYLIST #1 We ready? As Nana and TJ move to styling chairs, TJ studies posters of BLACK MODELS with beautiful diverse hair and styles. STYLIST #1 (CONT'D) So, what’re we doing today, Boss? NANA Let’s see. It needs to last until tomorrow so keep it simple and smooth. STYLIST #1 Soft sophistication. NANA Exactly. TJ (whispers) Why does she call you, Boss? NANA That’s my name. TJ So is my name, Doll? NANA I call you Doll because you’re precious to me. Boss is the name I was born with. TJ Like, your name-name? NANA Yep, it was sort of a trick of my Mother’s. Nana winks at TJ as Stylist #2 hands TJ back her Barbie with newly styled hair. STYLIST #2 We can’t have you looking like a star and your little friend looking a mess. TJ’s eyes widen with awe at Barbie’s newly styled hair. The shop buzzes with LAUGHTER and CONVERSATION. EXT. AFFLUENT NEIGHBORHOOD - CHILDREN’S BOUTIQUE - DAY Nana parks the Plymouth at the curb. INT./EXT. PLYMOUTH FURY - DAY Nana removes her large sunglasses, turns to TJ in the backseat. Both have newly, beautifully coiffed hair. NANA So, Doll, Grampa and I were supposed to go to the theater for a matinee performance tomorrow but you being here is a good excuse for him to not go. So, how about it? You and me? TJ Yes! NANA Then we should get you something to wear. TJ’s expression fills with excitement before she releases herself into tears. NANA (CONT'D) Come, come... Just climb over. TJ crawls over the seat, scoots in close for Nana’s hug. NANA (CONT'D) What’s this about? TJ I feel like Mama’s gonna be mad if I get new clothes. NANA Why would she be mad? TJ I don’t know. But she is. NANA You let me deal with your mama. No matter what happens in your life, remember this... You’re good because you’re God’s. You’re beautiful because you’re mine. And I get to spoil you because I don’t get to see you as much as I’d like, AND, because you deserve it, okay? So, let’s go find something that makes you see what I already see in you. Okay? TJ Okay. TJ nods. They hug. INT. CHILDREN’S BOUTIQUE - DAY Fine clothes and shoes line displays. Petit MANNEQUINS sport high-end clothing. Nana sashays with confidence. TJ follows in awe. SALES CLERK (50s, white and entitled) watches from a distant rack. As customers MOTHER (30s, white), and DAUGHTER (8, white) enter, Clerk greets them. CLERK Welcome in. Let me know if you need anything. Mother and Clerk exchange pleasant nods. Nana smirks as she peruses the racks, pulls items, holds them up to TJ. Clerk finally approaches. CLERK (CONT'D) Is there something I can help you with? NANA Not right now. I will let you know. CLERK We have a few of last season’s items on the sale rack in the back in case you are interested. NANA We’re not. Nana holds a beautiful dress up to TJ. NANA (CONT'D) Actually, you can take this to a dressing room. Oh, and this... and this... Nana pulls other garments from the rack, stacks them in Clerk’s unsuspecting arms before Clerk can object. Nana sits on the settee in front of the dressing room as TJ floats in and out, OUTFIT after OUTFIT. They make APPROVING and DISAPPROVING gestures while having a blast. Finally, arms filled with garments, Nana whispers into the dressing room as TJ puts her clothes back on. NANA (CONT'D) We’re getting these. Be right back, Doll. TJ Okay, Nana. AT THE REGISTER, arms filled with clothes, Nana spots something behind Clerk on a shelf. NANA Oh, and I’d like... that. Nana points to a child’s SUITCASE on a shelf. CLERK Ma’am, I won’t object to her trying on the clothes but I don’t want to go through the trouble of getting that very expensive bag if you haven’t the money to pay for it. NANA And put it in a nice gift box. Nana hands Clerk a credit card. CLERK Is this a joke? INSERT: Credit card reads “BOSS WILLIS” EXT. AFFLUENT NEIGHBORHOOD - CHILDREN'S BOUTIQUE - DAY Large GIFT BOX in one hand and shopping bags in the others, Nana exits the shop haughtily. TJ strides identically in tow. EXT. AFFLUENT NEIGHBORHOOD - CAFE - CONTINUOUS Nana surveys the ALL WHITE DINERS occupying the outdoor PATIO tables. She smirks. NANA Hungry, Doll? TJ notices the GLARES of the Mother and Daughter from the Boutique. When Daughter looks away from TJ with a snide arrogance, TJ clings to Nana’s arm. Nana notices TJ and the Daughter’s interaction. NANA (CONT'D) Doll? TJ Yes, Nana? NANA Remember, you’re good because... TJ I’m God’s. NANA You are beautiful because... TJ I’m yours. They take a deep breath and enter the Cafe. HOSTESS, 20s, greets them cheerfully. HOSTESS Welcome. Two? Indoor or outdoor...? INT. NANA AND GRAMPA'S HOME - BATHROOM - NIGHT In their matching peignoir sets, TJ stands on a stepstool next to Nana, mimics Nana as they wipe AVOCADO MASKS from their faces with washcloths, their hair neatly pin-curled and tucked under satin scarves. NANA Make sure the towel is a little warm and that you clean all of the parts of your face. (supportively) That’s it... Yes, Doll. Then, they gently smooth MOISTURIZER on their faces. NANA (CONT'D) Moisturizing is very important. Nana and TJ look at each other fondly, playfully as they finish the facial regimen. INT. PERFORMANCE VENUE - VARIOUS - DAY Fancily dressed, Nana and TJ wade confidently, audaciously through throngs of richly dressed THEATER-GOERS (white, all ages and genders). Many watch them with the disdain of privilege, self-importance. At their seats, Theater-Goers whisper INAUDIBLY. TJ’s oblivious wonder shields her from the hostility of glares around them. Nana ignores them, watches her Granddaughter look around the hall in awe. HOUSE LIGHTS DIM. As the ORCHESTRA plays, Nana watches the performance as much as she watches TJ’s unbridled enjoyment of it. EXT. NANA AND GRAMPA'S HOME - DAY Grampa waters the flowers as Nana pulls the car into the driveway. TJ bounds from the backseat for Grampa, who drops the hose just in time to catch her. TJ Grampa! You missed it! It was so fun. GRAMPA Fun? Are you sure you went to the ballet? TJ There was a girl and she went to sleep and she got a doll like mine but hers came to life. She was dancing! GRAMPA You wanna show me? Nana watches adoringly as the Two prance around the lawn. EXT. NANA AND GRAMPA'S HOME - PORCH - NIGHT Toni’s claw-like red painted nail presses the DOORBELL. INT. NANA AND GRAMPA'S HOME - LIVINGROOM - CONTINUOUS The front door opens. ON THE PORCH, Toni stands giddy in a long white form-fitting dress, dramatic shimmering makeup, and voluminous curly wig. Her new beau, LUTHER, a suit-clad Goliath, towers behind her in all white; shirtless leather vest and pants with white boots. TONI Here comes the bride! Toni throws her hands in the air a la Diana Ross in her greatest performance. Fingers splayed, she lowers her left hand, arm outstretched to show off a gaudy WEDDING RING. INT. NANA AND GRAMPA'S HOME - KITCHEN - NIGHT Grampa swigs the last of his scotch; carries serving dishes of STEAKS, POTATOES, and PEAS to the DINING ROOM. INT. NANA AND GRAMPA'S HOME - DINING ROOM - CONTINUOUS Grampa places the serving dishes in the center of the circular table where ALL sit for dinner. Toni dominates conversation. Luther eats loudly throughout the escalating exchange. TONI And when he said Vegas, I couldn’t imagine a more romantic place to spend a weekend. Everything was so perfect that he, well, you tell ‘em that part. LUTHER I asked her to marry me. TJ side-eyes Luther, pushes her food around her plate. TONI (to TJ) Eat. TJ looks at Nana’s plate; an adult serving of her own. TJ places her fork in her hand identical to Nana’s, sits up tall, and, from then on, eats when Nana eats. NANA I’m sorry, Luther, is it? Did it occur to you to ask her father, first. Nana forks a bite of potatoes, eats it. TJ does the same. TONI Oh, Mah, cut it out. We did that last time. You see how that worked out. LUTHER Food’s delicious. NANA Nathaniel was a chef in the Navy. I’m glad you can appreciate a good meal. TONI What is that supposed to mean? GRAMPA Toni. She didn’t mean anything by it. Nana and TJ cut their steaks; eat a bite. TONI She always means something. Nana chews quickly as not to speak with a full mouth. NANA Respectfully, when we got married-- TONI Respectfully, we ain’t in Arkansas and I ain’t no first time virgin-bride that you’re giving away in some arranged courtship. We’re going with the flow. NANA (to Luther) What do you know about raising children? TJ eyes Luther until Toni snaps, startles TJ. TONI (hisses) That’s my job. Luther’s job is to provide for our family. Like Daddy does. Luther is a good provider. You know, you got so much to say but I don’t see you around here doing your job. Daddy was in the Navy. Gave you all the things you got and you just sit up here and wait for him to wait on you hand and foot... GRAMPA Toni... NANA No, let her finish. Nana puts her fork down. So does TJ. TONI You’re just mad because I never caved to your highness. Never begged for your attention. “Please, Bossa, make me like you. Yassa Bossa-Momma, whatever you want.” You can sit up there and keep looking down on me from your high horse. Luther is gonna be a successful engineer. He married ME because success is nothing without someone to share it with. NANA (guffaws) Mahogany. Hah! (earnestly) Honor your father an mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Exodus twenty twelve. TONI Exodus. No problem. WE’RE a family now. Let’s go. Toni gets up, eyes Luther to do the same. LUTHER Thank y’all for this evening. It was... an evening. TONI (O.S.) (yells) TJ! TJ’s eyes well with tears. Defiantly, she cuts her steak, eats another bite. Before she can cut another cube, Nana puts her hand on TJ’s, nods softly. TJ drops the knife and fork, weeps. INT. NANA AND GRAMPA'S HOME - GUEST ROOM - NIGHT Nana packs TJ’s new suitcase with TJ’s things. Nana kneels, straightens TJ’s coat, smooths her curls; a final shield of dignity. Their eyes intensely lock. NANA You’re good... and you’re beautiful. Eye to eye, they share a brave, tearful nod. EXT. WILLIS' HOME - PORCH - NIGHT In her purple clogs, TJ wheels her new suitcase into the darkness of the walkway, to Luther’s monstrous CADDY. From the lit porch, Nana and Grampa watch her, Toni, and Luther load into the car. INT./EXT. LUTHER’S CADDY - NIGHT From the front seat, Toni turns around, scolds TJ in the backseat. TONI And no more of that “Doll” shit, either. Toni Junior. TJ. That’s your name. LUTHER Toni her daddy? TONI (snaps, guffaws) How you smart and stupid at the same time. It’s me. Short for Antoinette. Toni rummages through her purse, finds her packet of cigarettes. Takes one out as she looks in the rearview mirror, sees Nana and Grampa peering from the porch. TONI (CONT'D) Go! Luther takes the cigarette from her, winks, tucks it behind his ear. LUTHER Antoinette. That’s beautiful. Toni gasps dreamily. She and Luther kiss passionately. TJ scowls, looks away. TONI TJ. This is LUTHER. Your new Dad. Luther fixes the rearview on TJ. LUTHER You ready? Luther GUFFAWS as TJ turns to look out the rear window. He repositions the mirror for driving. TJ cries softly. TONI Turn around and sit down! Stop all that crying or I’mma give you something to cry about. It’s rude. (to Luther) See? What I tell you? (to TJ) When we get home, you gon’ take all that shit off you. Got you looking like you should be in a curio cabinet. Luther and Toni laugh at TJ as he finally starts the car. ON THE PORCH, Nana waves back as the car pulls away. Before anyone notices, Nana quickly wipes a tear from her face. Her body stiffens, quiet dread washes over her as the car disappears around the corner. TONI (CONT'D) TJ... You should see his apartment. It’s so nice... Toni continues her doting rant in the b.g. TJ turns around, sits forward in the seat, clutches Barbie tightly against the Nutcracker program. She straightens the collar on her coat and smooths her curls as the car drives on. FADE TO BLACK THE END ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of the cross-genre collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF (Stalking Horse Press),  When Trying to Return Home  (Counterpoint Press), a short story collection,  Kinds of Grace  (Flowersong Press), a poetry collection, and the forthcoming speculative fiction collection  Neon Steel  (Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.) Her newest poetry collection VERSUS will be released by Texas Review Press in March 2027. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (prose), Kimbilio (fiction), CantoMundo (poetry), Sundress Academy for the Arts (hybrid). She earned her MFA in creative writing from Florida International University and PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is fiction editor at  Pleiades  and an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.  Africa Hollers Back to Me (After “Beng Beng Beng” by Femi Kuti)  Tatatata Tatatatata ta I’m fresh-skinned and ain’t got no time  for beef-ridden days under the underbelly of Motherland The Black girls holler “ay, ay” and I’m in with ‘em, the cut or whatever you looking for. Ain’t been back for a minute  but I’m back and y’all read my past.  Figure it out in distinct hieroglyphics  or chopped units of sound snatched the wig from e’rbody’s core  and I know exactly how you mewl.  I ain’t been back since I got down  to Lagos sound: oya, bebe  para mi cuerpo, that’s right:   kai, na wahala bengbengbeng like we got that trembling,  heartsplit sound. So bring in that riddim baby, kiss me swift under your leaf-drip’d tree and let that mother-bass keep going going going going  until my purple mouth is your blue one  and we’re both  fucking  screaming one last time.  ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a Trinidadian poet, teaching artist, and theatre performer who lives in New York. Her latest collection, The Limitless Heart,  won the 2024 CLMP Firecracker Award. Born in Trinidad and raised in Queens, New York, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is the author of seven collections of poetry. In 2021, her verse memoir,  Mama Phife Represents,  won The Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde award and honors her son, Hip-Hop legend Malik, aka Phife Dawg, of A Tribe Called Quest. Her latest collection,  The Limitless Heart,  won the 2024 CLMP Firecracker Award. Cheryl is currently working on her eighth collection of poetry. Last Visit to Arima River Outside the back bedroom window Calla lilies lift their heads  At GG’s house the off-white family room is still here  It’s where I learned to pray  Where I learned to sneak sips of wine  Learned to keep secrets  It is where everything was already hidden before I was born If I stay here I will turn to stone I can already feel the rage building  Shooting up my spine uninvited I could write until I burst Two streets away I feel the familiar smell and magnitude of river It is there grandma will cut our hair only in full moon Twelve years and river still talking loud Her big screech calls me to the stark awakening of day It is her laughter that still brings me joy It is her clear eyes that surround me like mirrors Her gurgling that brings me poems Her arms holding me in a clear blue wall of clarity I wait for poems hungry as a bird unfed for weeks When they arrive my poems are full grown they are already written Sweeter days are here her mouth covers mine In this new calla bloom  morning rain has swept the sky. MISTAKEN They set we world on fire hope yuh happy now watching we burn real fear in de air feels like white sage and Florida water ain't fixing shit meh blood pressure meds  albuterol  quick insulin  extra heart monitor  poetry books bank card  house keys   in de whole foods trolley by de door ah go ha to buy water when ah reach weyever ah goin nowadays ah duz walk wid meh us passport  non-drivers id   passport card social security de new real card wid US flag w/o meh mask  de aint go care I Malik mother de go mistake meh for senagalese  haitian  panamanian   bajan black trinidadian immigrant gang member alien slave black mother black  democrat  other other anti-trump- r undocumented slave self deported-- Dad did you See my mother Slight slip of a girl   dad Fifth grade   did you love her then too Her hair a black majestic rain Two proud braids high Rockets JUNE PLUMS My father is forever my child when I arrive in Trinidad                                                                                                                   he begs for bread and wine he begs for new crisp American dollars                                                                                        and a white shirt for he sista funeral at sixteen he begs me to ask my mother to take him back even though he loves another woman he loves my mother more                                                                                                                he says my father shows me a picture of a small freckle faced child swears me to secrecy promise that I will not tell my mother about the boy he’s hiding father takes me to the ocean to meet my little brother August sea still warm I make a necklace of seaweeds for his gleaming neck my father thanks me for the boy’s gift throws himself into my arms rage eating me like June plums. wonder if he loves this light skin boy more than me? After the Gray Pitbull in Fort Greene Park I hope never to know the sharp edge  of a pit’s teeth we are pressed against a tree listening to his truth  praying for safety  evening drew near  a soft cover around us we pulled closer  asking mist to cover and shield  we were trespassing  running from our world/ourselves  from the barking of wild dogs in this nightmare   we became stone  we became ghost jasper  mesh  piss   became fire  siren  scream became toddler  gravity  nameless    dust  santera   sage THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and Jae Nichelle on August 5th, 2025. Wow, thank you so much for sharing this breathtaking series of poems. I love the lines “I wait for poems hungry as a bird unfed for weeks/ When they arrive/ my poems are full grown.” Does this reflect your general writing process? When’s the last time a poem arrived “full grown?” Laughter…  The last “fully grown” poem arrived in 2022. It is the closing poem in The Limitless Heart , titled “She Led Me.” And no, it does not reflect my writing process. This has happened on several occasions, though, usually when there is someone or something on my mind that I cannot shake or escape. “Mistaken” leaves me speechless. Especially the moment “de aint go care I Malik mother,” as mother becomes the first instance of self-prescribed identity. Outside of race and gender, what aspects of your identity and personhood do you care to describe yourself with most? Mother, daughter, Caribbean Woman Poet. The first time I knew I would die for something was when I became a mother. And even though my son is no longer here with us, the most important thing that I am is still a MOTHER. These poems are so rhythmic, frequently featuring single words pulled out or listed. In what ways, if any, has the rhythm of your poetry changed over the years? I cannot even say that the rhythm of my poetry has changed very much. I think it is the same, serious, soulful, organic thing it always was. But even then, it really depends on the theme of the poem, the mood of the event. And I would say as I get older, my poems are becoming a bit heavier, mostly because of the challenging times in which we live. I feel less safe or stable. My poems still come to me in dreams, fantasy, or memory; mostly, they wait for me in the blue cut of skin where desire begins. I feel a rush, a warm glow on my skin, a sense of anticipation and elation when the poem begins. Then, I must be alone to build it. Even the feel of pen to paper is an erotic act for me. I remember when I worked in New York City and took the subway from Brooklyn; I would carry the new poem with me everywhere, peeking at it, smiling at it, reading it over and over, almost like a new lover. It’s a kind of crazy thing. My poems are a sacred part of my soul that I could never give up. I let them shape their own rhythm…they run the show, not me. In an  incredible interview with Glenis Redmond , you talked about how you’ve become more honest and forthright in your writing and how you “don’t give a damn” about what you say in your work. Is there anything at all that still feels hard to say these days? Actually, I did not mean for it to sound like I don’t care. I do care. What I really meant was that I’m not afraid or ashamed to share anything anymore, or if I’m judged or disliked, or even misunderstood. The poem has a life of its own. In my MFA program at Stonecoast, they used to say a poem is a “made thing.” I’ve learned over the years that I don’t make it, it makes itself, and I have to respect that. I remember having a conversation with Ronald K. Brown of Evidence Dance Company once when we were on tour. I asked him how he made his decisions on his choreography, the music, movement, and text for a program, and he answered in the most sincere tone, “It’s all about obedience, my friend.” I learned that day it was all about listening, trust, and observing what the poem wanted to do. It takes a lot of trust to do that, but I have developed it over the years. Sometimes I still want to tell the poem what I want. But then the poem says, “That’s not working, I’m not doing that.” Truthfully, there is a lot that is still hard to say, especially about family and friends. I had difficulties when I was writing about my son‘s death in Mama Phife Represents . I ran some content by his wife, Deisha, and by his dad because I knew he was not just my baby. He belonged to them, too, and in a lot of ways, he also belonged to his whole Universe of music lovers… Wow, that was hard. Weeks before the book came out, I was worried and crying and breaking down, thinking I had given away too much of our lives. I learned later that most of it was grief. Grief is a hell of a demon. You are currently working on your eighth collection of poetry. What can you share about how that process is going? I wish I could share that it’s going swell, but it seems like every day I’m putting off the hard work of developing and documenting. This collection is on romance and erotica…one of my favorite topics. But I’m at a strange place in my twenty-eight-year relationship right now. I didn’t realize how hard writing about romance and love would be, so I find myself making a lot of notes but not diving full force into the text. I guess in ways, I’m waiting for the piece to write itself. That sounds strange, but sometimes it happens. I know I will wake up one morning and say to no one in particular, “I’m done fooling around, pass me my pen and paper.” What was your very first job? My very first serious job as a poet occurred when I returned to New York City from visiting Ghana, West Africa. It was my first trip to the continent of Africa, and I was blown away. I felt full, overflowing with poems, with joy, and with unbelievable feelings of loss for what I had witnessed there. I had seen the sadness and abuse that my people endured, and I had to rework that experience in my body somehow and make it palpable to share; thus began my first job.  I created an Art exhibit that consisted of poems and photos. The exhibit was then shown at CBGB’s rock and jazz club in the East Village of New York City, and at the Goddess Gallery in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York. I saw firsthand Goree Island and Elmina Castle, where free Africans were sold into slavery. The experience was overwhelming. The spirit of my ancestors descended upon me, and I knew that this writing gift was not just a hobby, and that I was blessed with real serious work. The universe had picked me, how lucky I was! What is one of your favorite memories of performing your work or someone else's? I have so many favorite memories of performing, but I will say one that stands out the most for me is my collaboration with Ronald K. Brown/ EVIDENCE, A Dance Company. The company is based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work is a mixed bag of African dance, modern dance, and Capoeira. We worked together for over 15 years. I wrote the text, and they would dance to it. I would be on stage performing my piece while they danced around me. One of our favorite pieces is entitled WATER, a poem I created to honor my son, Hip-Hop icon, Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor, an original founding member of the seminal hip-hop group, A Tribe Called Quest. The poem is deeply spiritual and cultural, and lovingly honors the lives of Black men and boys. As the mother of a black man, I held so many fears inside, fear for his safety and survival. Yet at the same time, I had so much hope for my son and for black men everywhere.   I am most proud of that poem. Even now, so many years later, it gives me hope and joy. It will be relevant for years to come.  What do you love to do most when you visit Trinidad? When I am in Trinidad, I love to visit family more than anything else… to feel their hugs, to hear their stories in Trini dialect, to watch my favorite Tanty cook our national dishes. I also love to go to the river to listen to its language and relive childhood memories. Most important is to wrap myself in the joy of my family, which is always expanding. I also love to walk around the Green market listening to people’s conversation and salving myself with down-home stories in Trini Creole. Oh, how I love my people! How can people support you right now? You can pray for me, because even though I’ve come a long way, there are days when the loss of my beloved son Malik just overwhelms me and I need your light. I will also share what former New York State Poet Laureate Willie Perdomo said: Spend time with our youth, whatever gifts you have, share it with them, be it knitting, writing, poetry, playing chess, soccer, or riding a bike… find them wherever they are and give generously.  We have got to leave them some joy. Our world is very challenging now, and we have to lighten their way. Name another Black woman writer people should know.    Keisha-Gaye Anderson and Allia Abdullah-Matta. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Click here to support Torch Literary Arts.

Penda Smith is a poet and educator whose work has appeared in Root Work Journal , Huffington Post ,  Frontier Poetry , and Muzzle Magazine . A former First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she earned her MFA in Poetry and Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, Hedgebrook Fellow, and VONA alum; her work explores memory, lineage, and the textures of Black womanhood. She recently quit all her jobs and is preparing to move to South Korea, as she is 27 with no prospects and no children. She loves walking, meditating, reading, and rollerskating. Obedience I don’t want to remember you as the woman who forced Islam down my throat, but as the woman who put my siblings and I in private school even though you could not afford it. I want to remember you as the woman who taught me how to cook traditional Senegalese foods: supakanye, theibou jen, theibiop,  and a leg of   lamb.  I don’t want to remember you as the woman who yelled, "show me your panties!" Or the woman who watched eight pm arrive without me. Who believed that I came home late because I laid with a boy as if he was my husband.  I want to say that the woman who sacrificed a lamb seven days after my birth, who named me after my grandmother, Penda Mbaye, was not the same woman who slapped me. Who flicked on the lights, stepped up to me, and pushed me out the door as if I were a thief. I want to rewire my memory. I almost hear you say, "The Bronx is dangerous for a teenage girl, but come here, daughter: You have arrived late, but at least you have arrived." I want to forget the night you kicked me out because I would not show you my panties. I did not show you my panties because I deserve the privacy of my blood. Did someone ask to see your panties when you were a young girl?   Let me remember that salvation is the mother who shoves white rice down her daughter’s throat, who chokes on a fishbone. Let me hold dearly the knowing that mercy is the mother who prays with the same hands she draws blood with. Let me remember that forgiveness is the child who remembers that her mother was once a child.  I want to remember you as a young girl in 1978 on a beach—perhaps in Ngor, Plage Popenguine, or Plage De Yoff in Senegal. In the sepia photo, you are skinny. You wear large circular glasses, a loose shirt, and a long chiffon skirt that brushes your ankles. I want to remember you as the woman who left Senegal at the tender age of 17 to travel to Mauritania, Los Palmas, then Italy, to buy and resell handbags so that you could provide a living for your mother and two children. Where was your first husband? Did he abandon you?    Are you afraid that love will always abandon you? Is that why you clung to me? Why you tied me to your back when I was a baby? Why you expected me by your side in the kitchen, even when I needed a stool to see inside the pot?  *** When I was 17, I prayed to get into college so I could leave home; when you were 17, you prayed for a green card so you could live in America. The American Dream: you would learn English, attend City College, and become a doctor. You would save, and send for your mother and kids. All of you would live together the way the American families lived together in the commercials: A woman pushes a young girl on a swing, they both laugh wildly in the advertisement for baby pampers. The scene of a family eating dinner on Thanksgiving, the mother passing along the slice of turkey to her husband while her two children play footsies.  You will learn that the American Dream is a dream. You will not become a doctor.  You will not get green cards for your family in Senegal. You will create a new family in America, and become a conditional citizen when you marry my father in 1998, and then a permanent citizen three children later.   You will not push a child on a swing.  You will work 12 hours at Seamen's Furniture in Harlem. You will not have peaceful Thanksgiving holidays, nor children who get along long enough to play footsies under the table. Your two children from your first marriage will grow up hating you, believing that you abandoned them, though in your eyes, you left to care for them.   Your three American children will learn to fear the sound of your house key unlocking the door. You will say that it does not matter if your children like you, but they must respect you. You will raise me to be a second mother, and I will resent you for it.  *** I do not want to remember you as a teenage mother who had to mother her mother, but as a young girl with a hand on her hip, sand in her shoes, as she posed for a picture while behind her, the Dakar sun laughed boisterously. I don't want to write about our suffering entangled in a baobab tree, twisting towards God—our salvation on the edge of a leaf's blade. But I must write about my suffering if I am to suffer less. If I am to suffer less, I must name my suffering whilst not drown in a quicksand of the self that clings to the pleasure of forgetting. As I write, I remember. As I remember, I sit. As I sit, I shovel my way to the root of my suffering, which is also your suffering. I breathe in, I breathe out. It was Eid the night you slapped me– the loose skin under your arms shook as you demanded my blood to exit. A good mother sacrifices. A good mother obeys her mother, you tell me, then you spat, "The Bronx is a dangerous place for a girl at night." Then you kicked me out into a dangerous place for a girl at night. Then you let me in a few hours later. Then you did not say my name for days.  You’d say, "Tell the girl to sweep. Tell the girl to fix my bed. Tell the girl to clean the bathroom. Tell the girl she not going to no open mic. Tell the girl that she needs to learn about the Qu'ran. Tell the girl that Allah knows everything done in the dark. Tell the girl to cover her head when she cooks my food. Tell the girl to say Bismillah  when she pour the oil."  *** It’s the morning of Eid. You wear a white scarf and a purple jalabiya. You dip your croissant in your coffee. Daddy, Issa, and Mariam are asleep. You and I sit at the white picnic table on the balcony. Daddy's work clothes, dumb bells, laundry detergent, and black plastic bags are piled to our left, but before the day is over, Mariam will be tasked with revamping the balcony. You gaze into my eyes as if you have seen me for the first time.  You ask, "Do you know why we celebrate Eid every year?" "No, why do we celebrate?"  Below us, on the main street of 161 street, a bulldozer drills into concrete as if to touch the bottom of the earth while cars and buses move along the road like shackled prisoners. The Bronx, a concrete institution, with little trees, and tall square buildings. Our balcony view is the side profile of another building. I don't need to be downstairs to know that the woman yelling at a man who is presumably her baby father has red hair, lives on the 23rd floor, and can double-dutch her ass off. Nor do I need to see the long line out the welfare office on the corner, or hear the crinkle of plastic as a Mexican fruit vendor drops three apples inside. “Ibrahim and his wife Hagar wanted a son, but had trouble becoming pregnant. For over twenty-five years, they have begged Allah for a son. Finally, Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael. One day, Allah showed Ibrahim in a dream to sacrifice his son. The next day, Ibrahim told Ishmael about the dream, and do you know what Ishmael said?" I know the story. Both versions. Christians say that it was Sarah and Abraham who begged God for a son; muslims say that it was Ibrahim and his other wife, Hagar, who wanted a son. In the Bible, the son's name is Isaac; in the Qu'ran, it's Ishmael. In both versions, it is a lesson on obeying God's will. Christians celebrate their lives through faith; muslims sacrifice and eat lamb to remember that Ishmael laid down, closed his eyes, and awaited the knife.  You are passionate and kind when you talk to me about Islam. Your white smile that can bring an alabaster seashell to shame, your raisin hands, thin gray eyebrows, your matching lavender headscarf to cover the onset of alopecia that arrived after you gave birth to Issa.  It's hard to believe that you are the woman in the picture. Not because you are older, but because the young woman who smiles on a beach smiles like she knows how to let her hair down. Like she knows how to praise God, and also praise the wild animal in her. I want to step inside that photo and hold your hand. I want to watch the Atlantic Ocean sweep the sand, while I ask you questions I am not brave enough to ask you now: Who was your first kiss? How do you know when you're ready for a boyfriend? Did you ever touch yourself as if you were your own wife? Have you ever been attracted to a girl, and still been attracted to a boy?  But all you can talk about is the Qu'ran and Allah. "Ishmael say to his father,  I go willingly . Ibrahim and Ishmael love Allah so much. They go to Moriah, find a stone, then Ishmael lay down."  Tears well up in your eyes, you set your glasses on the table, and I pass you a napkin. "Ishmael tell to his father, Let me look away. Tie my hands and tie your eyes because if you look or I look, you will not be able to obey Allah. " What kinda God sends a dream demanding them to kill their child? What kinda God gives someone something then takes it away, and why would any child consent to that? If Allah told you to sacrifice me, would you? Don't answer that. For now, you drink from your pink Queen  coffee mug, smack your lips, and exclaim, "As Ibrahim raise the knife, Allah tell the angel Jibril,  Go! Go! Switch the son with this lamb! So that's why we celebrate Eid, why I woke up early this morning right after fajr , so they can kill a lamb. We celebrate to remember how Ibrahim and Ishmael obeyed God. The lamb is holy because it came from heaven." *** If an ewe has not bonded with her lamb within thirty minutes, she will reject the lamb, and if the lamb does not find another mother, it will not survive. The first shearing of a lamb produces the finest wool a lamb will ever produce, and for that reason, the most valuable.   The lamb that replaced Ishmael's body died a virgin. Virginity is a commodity that can cleanse sin, commensurate devotion, and please God. I learn that I — like you, like Ibrahim, like Ishmael— am alive to please God. Restlessness boils in my blood, but I don't let you see it.  "I'm going to an open mic at six. How you want the lamb—" You interrupt me, "You mean Inshallah! If God's willing, you go to the open mic!" You continue, "Save the liver so I can wrap it around my feet." "Mashallah."    Was your first husband gentle? Did he learn your body, kiss upon your high cheekbones as if climbing a mountain, caress your espresso back, and then make love to you as if you were one of Allah's children? Or did he bulldoze into you? Did you clench your teeth, close your eyes, and brace while your body alchemized? How did you know what to do if you waited until marriage? On your wedding night, was there blood on your sheet? When you married your first husband at 17, did you love him? Or were you just being obedient to your mother? Did you honeymoon somewhere in Dakar overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean, or did you travel to the countryside in Cyprus, where you would take me thirty years later?  Laabaan , derived from the Wolof word for purification, symbolizes a bride's purity that confirms her virginity until marriage. Our conversation about sex was to not have it. That if I did, my husband would leave me because I was unclean. Why did you assume I wanted a husband? Unchopped onions, garlic, and bell peppers await in the kitchen. I rise from the picnic table. "Penda, why you always on the go? You don't care about the Qu'ran? This poetry thing will not save you." To be born into Islam means that an Imam shaved my head, and for seven days, I did not have a name until a lamb was slaughtered. Who was I for seven days? My blood rising to my brown cheeks, a lamb's blood drained in a butcher shop. Later that evening, there will be an open mic downtown. I could read my poem, "To Be A Black Woman in America," but I will not. I will not take the Manhattan-bound 4 train; I will ride the 4 train to Woodlawn Avenue. A young boy will slobber his tongue on my face as if he were an Ewe licking a lamb. I will memorize his rough hands, how he yanks on my box braids, bites my neck, then kisses me on my forehead and sends me home in a taxi. He is nothing if not a gentleman. I will learn that men are gentlemen until they are not.  *** A male voice sings, Allahu akbar four times, signaling that it is almost time for the Asr  prayer. Before you unfurl your brown and gold prayer rug with a stitched mosque in the center, before you touch your forehead to the mat, you say, "Wherever I go, my mother was there." You tell me another story. "There was a wedding in Almandies that I really wanted to go to, but my mother said no. But I say okay, I will go anyway, and before she knows it, I will be back. So my friends and I go, and guess what? When I go to the wedding, I fall and hurt myself. My mother knew what was best for me. She never wants anything bad to happen to me. When I finish school, she pick me up. After basketball practice, she pick me up. If I go to a party, she is there, and she would yell, 'Issatou! You know, I'm only so tough on you because you have my mother's name.'" You walk to your bathroom and motion for me to step inside. You demonstrate wudhu , a cleansing ritual where you wash the right hand three times, then the left. Before you face east in the direction of Mecca, I ask you once more how I should cut up the leg of lamb.  A good leg of lamb has to marinate in lemon, garlic, Goya, ground habanero, and should be sliced vertically, this I know. To preheat the oven to 350°Fahrenheit, to grind the seasoning and insert it into the cuts, this I know.  You close the door behind you, then say, "My door lock at eight pm."  That is all the permission I need to be let out of your line of sight long enough to experiment with what it feels like to be touched in the dark. I do not yet know that I will hate you for not teaching me how to have sex. That I will blame you for all the times that boys will take advantage of me because of my naivety. In our small tunnel of a kitchen, I chop onions, peel garlic, slice up bell peppers, clean the leg of lamb with water and lemon, pat it dry with a towel, and slice deep pockets into the meat. I stuff grounded parsley, salt, pepper, and Goya, then sprinkle it all over the lamb. Hours pass by, hair sticks to my forehead, sweat sticks my shirt to my back.  From Daddy's cabinet, I steal a blue razor, hoist my leg on the side of the tub, and bring the blade to my private. To prevent razor bumps and ingrown hairs, you should shave with the grain and not against it. You should not shave right before intercourse. But you do not have to shave if you do not want to. You can wait until marriage, or you cannot. It may hurt, but it doesn't have to. You might bleed, but you need not be afraid of blood.  *** Outside, the early evening rain is five months pregnant. Swollen breasts water quickens as soft tissue gesticulates in the womb; water carries litter and is clogged in the sewer. Backache and hunger straddle my umbrella— I swipe my MetroCard at Yankee Stadium, run up the stairs, and catch the Woodlawn-bound 4 train. Red explodes like tomatoes in scorching oil. The sun kneels and stabs the sky.  ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Shy-Zahir Moses (they/them) is a Black person, poet, and educator from Dallas, Texas, whose poems appear in Callaloo , Dialogist , and A Gathering Together Journal . They are a Best New Poets 2025 nominee and fellow of The Watering Hole and The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. A recent graduate from The New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin, Shy’s work is an honest attempt to disentangle their very messy, complicated childhood and their definitions of home and family. Shy is a lover of all things soft and loud, a fan of horror movies, Solange, and Tuesday afternoons in the spring. They are everything, always, and something, occasionally. Follow them on Substack @uhnoid to read their "fake" essays and @thee_shy_aries on Instagram for whenever they feel like showing their face. Their website is pending.  joking, my sister told our mother we’d fight one day. said a body was sure to go  through the glass table of Annie Lee figurines and the broken pieces  would glitter the swamp green rug and collect  dust under the couch we only sat on after  one of us had hurt the other.  said it was bound to happen. said there was no way sisters could ever live so long without making the other  cry. joking, i said i’d beat her. said she was better at taking a punch and i was better  at throwing them. said we couldn’t  break the table or the figurines because i wanted one for my first apartment. Blue Monday. said my rage was stronger and more important. we laughed while our mother sat silent on the couch, staring at us, then back at her hands. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Yolanda Kwadey is a Ghanaian currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction at the University of Florida. Her writing typically centers African women and race. She also enjoys genre-bending and has worked on Subtropics as an assistant editor. Prior to the MFA, Yolanda has been published twice in the Samira Bawumia Literary Prize Anthology by Ghana's former Second Lady for her creative nonfiction pieces: “Mama Doesn’t Know” and “Life Is a Baptism.” She is also a recipient of the Rebecca Elizabeth Porter Creative Writing Fellowship by the University of Florida. The Museum of Fiction “Do Ghanaians really eat eggs with everything?” I look up from my notebook and into his round face. The stubble on his jaw is scant, not as if he has recently shaved, more like he is inducing beard growth with some miracle oil. I know too many men like this, seen too many ads from Instagram pages back in Ghana. The trolley is crawling slowly into midtown Tampa, that part with the redbrick shop that screams “Cigar City” with its signage. I’m in some kind of war with my mind because I want to write about the city’s beauty, situate a character in it, let them wander about the roosters pattering up and about the city center, but I’m short of words. I think of why I escaped Gainesville for the spring break, but I can’t think of where to begin. There are the rains, and the acne’d students that swarm every part of the city like the plague of locusts in the Old Testament. There are the overwhelming courses with the underwhelming lectures, and the overthinking how to make writing interesting for anti-Humanities and entitled Engineering students with the writing capacities of a second grader. Then I look at the stranger seated ahead of me. He has twisted his body like a wrung rag so that he can look at me, so that I cannot escape his sunburnt and peeling face.  “What?” I ask. “Ghanaians and eggs, is that true?” He angles his phone towards me, and the street interviewer is paused. A Ghana flag covers most of the screen. I’m trying not to roll my eyes. I wish they would come up with a new stereotype – like we shower too many times a day, or we are too docile, or something truly egregious. The egg one is no longer funny. “I don’t know,” I say. Then the trolley stops, and I rush off to escape him. I wonder what makes him think I’m Ghanaian. I want to be angered that I may have been nationally profiled – if that even is a thing – but I remember the shirt I’m wearing, which says “Ghana, Ghana, Ghana”. I feel silly, but I convince myself that I am only distracted. Excited, too. I am disappointed that the strange man from the trolley has deboarded behind me. I move out of the way so that he can pass, but he lingers, joins me from the side as if I was inviting him for a conversation. The sun is scorching, and Tampa is bright, like a mirror reflecting light on a surface, the kind that blinds you. I’m immediately sweating on my nose bridge and my philtrum, and my forehead and my chin. I’m already looking around for a shaded place to sit, to write and plan this crazy plot. It is hard to work out the nitty-gritties of any creative writing plot when a stranger is loitering around you, harassing you with worthless knowledge of your identity. “Are you from around here? I came all the way from Macon,” he says. He expects me to know this place, but what is a Macon? I watch the hind of the yellow and white trolley disappear down the street wistfully. It is a callous joke to alight the same time as this man when the entire objective was to evade his nuisance. I recognize now that my instinct can be absolute garbage most of the time, and then I begin worrying about this ploy I’m considering. I hope I don’t have to depend on my instinct too much – the same one that encouraged me to move from Accra to a hot swamp in the middle of Florida for a degree in English. None of the other international students ever knew the point of that.  “So, you learn and teach English?” they ask. “No,” I say, “I read a lot of research and come up with theories.” “Theories about what?” “People,” I say, “Human behavior.” “Like Biology?” “No. Like social behaviors and the possible psychology behind it,” I correct. “So like Sociology and Psychology?” “No,” I sigh. “I can’t explain it.”  I suspect they believe I’m not very good at English because I can’t explain what I do in English at the English Department. I wish I can say, “English isn’t my first language” and get on with it, but not when I have left my investment job back in Ghana to come read and write in the United States. I wish I can say I’m here for creativity, for the secret craving for human creativity. They have burned away all those books, and the ones they liked too much are trapped in glass cages in museums. I want to read those and smell them. I have heard they had a distinct smell, like a wet tree bark and the smell of something else – something uncanny that ought to be smelled to understand. Grandma told us of them before she passed a few years ago. She is the last person I know who recalled what it felt like to smell and touch the human books, to traverse libraries and feel consumed by human creativity. “There is something sweet, fresh, delicious about them. And when we read, we could taste the words in our mind, and our minds stored parts we didn’t know until those parts stirred in us, and compelled us to write, write, write,” Grandma said. She caressed the air with a fist, as if she were grinding pepper with a wooden grinder in an earthenware bowl. “Why were they burned then?” I asked.  My sister was watching a cartoon movie very loudly in the living room, and it was overstimulating me from the verandah. The outside air was stale with heat, but we were safe from the scorching sun because of the awning. “There is a witchcraft to writing like that. You mix things that you know with things the world knows, and you pour time and sweat and blood and tears into the mixture, slather it on a page. That’s a covenant right there, between reader and writer, an education so subtle you have to read the very last page to realize it. I guess the world leaders didn’t like that a lot, and the businessmen were obsessed with the computers and robots doing all of it. People are more expensive than machines. More than you can imagine,” Grandma said. Grandma is the reason I read so much. I read old passages about books that no longer exist, licked to ash or shredded into pieces of incognizant letters and words. There was a museum in Accra, for the Ghanaian books that were written by human hands, but it burned down in a fire – mysteriously – and that was that. I never got to visit. There is an age limit, and it was gone by the time I was thirteen, so I have grown up with only the strange fictions written by the machines, wondering if human fiction was tamer or more mystifying. The Macon man has given up on the conversation, but he has to let me know. “You know, I just wanted to chat,” he is saying, “there’s no need to be so rude.” I want to ask him to define rude, to search its meaning on the internet and write a four-page analysis on why this interaction is rude. His face is still red and puffy, and some of the skin on his arm is peeling off. His nose is long, as if it is reaching out for me, hooked as if it is threatening to attack me. “Females like you end up lonely and sad. I suppose you’re one of those who believe in the articles about women being happier single, but I know a lot of single women, and they’re very sad,” he tells me. I can tell he is vexed, but I know it’s not out of empathy for the sad,   single women he knows. “You would think exotic birds would be more willing, right? You know, in Ghana, cats are not very likable because they’re too witchy,” I say. He flinches, too surprised to hear me speak again to notice my humor. I’m disappointed. I want him to know that I like my neighbors’ cats, and that I pspsps  my way down the streets when I’m not running late for a university lecture. He shakes his head and walks away, possibly thinking of old slurs for me, maybe something about eggs now that he knows that joke. I stuff my notebook inside my long, brown bag, shove it against the sanitizer bottle, the many cards – state, student, insurance, Florida Education Association, library, credit, debit – and the pale pink handkerchief. My phone lights up with a text from my mother, a long message wishing me happy birthday. I suspect there’s a prayer in there, blessings in Jesus’ name, questions about dating at twenty-seven, and how is school? I ignore it and let my phone show me the way to the museum. Tampa’s Museum of Fiction is one of the few left in the United States, and my digital map says it’s a ten-minute walk away from me. I’m excited. And nervous. I walk down sidewalks, wind around tall glass buildings, breathe under the shade of the skyscrapers and the trees that interrupt the sidewalks. There are people everywhere and pet owners walking the creatures they have adopted to fulfill a deep mental and emotional need that they themselves cannot reach. A few bare-chested men in flimsy shorts jog past me. Two years of experiencing this phenomenon and I’m still left flustered – should this be legal when there are still complaints about women in crop tops at the gym? I think I shouldn’t really care; I’ve only been to the gym once and when my biceps burned from flexing them with weights, I never returned. I don’t intend to. I’m sweating all over when I arrive at the museum. It is a strange building, pink bricks with many pointed roofs that gleam in the cruel sun. There’s a courtyard brimming with deliberately cultivated grass, and begonias and zinnias. The air here feels cooler. I inhale deeply with hope that I’ll smell the things people have described; stick my tongue out and close my eyes, hoping to taste what Grandma has promised. I don’t feel twenty-seven at all – maybe twenty-six and a half years old. Nothing inside me feels different. Nothing has changed. I’m still a Ghanaian immigrant, still as dark as the soot of a burned book, still of an average height, still wondering what I should be doing with my life. I have all these years ahead of me, but what for? There is a short queue at the museum entrance, but I can see inside. The floors are tiled a dirty white, but they glisten under the bright white lights on the tall ceilings. When a person in the queue disappears farther inside, they seem to shrink in size, swallowed by the sudden change in the ceiling height. The walls of the reception area are pristine but yellow, and I notice that as I move with the queue. Golden letters – Museum of Fiction – are burned into the wall behind the receptionist, who is scanning tickets and selling them. “I’m so sorry, the AI system is down,” she says, scrunching her forehead so that patrons believe she’s sorry about the situation. She’s in her late forties. I don’t think she’s very sorry about the situation. I imagine she’s a bit happy to finally be used, to prove that she’s capable of steering patrons the right way without complex algorithms and codes. The wall on the other side is scattered with unrecognizable names – single names only – like O’Connor , and Hawthorne , like Achebe , and Poe . I recognize the name Shakespeare  because of all the academic literature concerning him in my department. I know excerpts from pieces he wrote that have been destroyed. I found them both thrilling and underwhelming, and I was strangely certain that there is more and better out there, to read, to enjoy, to stir up words within me to write. I tap on the notebook in my bag. I am determined to write – if only I could read something in there and have my mind fed with the witchcraft of human creative writing…. “Ticket, please,” the receptionist says. Now that I’m towering over her, I can see the copper mustache above her lip. The bright lighting exposes the hairs on her face, the splotches of hyperpigmentation on her forehead and cheeks. “Now purchasing,” I say. I grab at the cards in my bag until the credit card comes out. The ticket is $45, but I pretend the number is meaningless, convince myself a fed mind is equal to a fed stomach. Then I walk into the giant hall and wait to feel myself shrink under the tall ceilings, but I stay the same. The ceiling and its chandeliers dangle far up over me, gloomier, unwilling to share the proximity with me. People, exiguous, linger in couples and small groups, trudging in and out of the five rooms.  The glass cases begin in the long hallway, and the first of them has a QR code. It connects me to a self-guided tour that begins with a woeful adagio. The voice is nasal and pitchy in a way that sounds bored, and when the guiding voice breathes – which it does many times – I think I feel my auricles warm up. It welcomes me to the Museum, warns me to only look and not touch because “longing oft leads to a downfall.” I am not inclined to obey, but I wonder about security guards, probe for hidden cameras. I feel watched even without seeing any cameras, and maybe it is those yellow hanging chandeliers from far above. I try to shake it off, blame it on paranoia, convince the little thief in me that the only downfall that awaits me is unbridled creativity that pours from page to page and beguiles rebellious readers. I have read of revolutions, and aren’t the leaders listed in history books ordinary troublemakers that broke a rule or law? I think of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first prime minister, think of him slumped in a prison, drowning in the stench of his own urine and feces. Any confidence I have – if there was any – wavers. I hate the smell of urine and feces. The voice, flat and pinched, tells me about the long hallway first, about the stained glass on each end of the museum shaped like a leaflet, and how significant it is. I stare down one end, look at the orange-blue-pink glass, but it’s merely a rectangle – its symbolism is arbitrary. I wonder if this is a clever attempt to induce the patron’s imagination, maybe a wisdom that evades me, so I stare longer. Then I squint, tilt my head this way and that way. Eventually, I must accept that I have wasted my five minutes on this. I let the voice drone on but refuse to align my tour with its instruction in order to embolden the rebel inside. “The case numbered four has – deep breath – some of the earliest and most memorable gothic – deep breath – horrors.” But I am looking at the bookcase tagged as 11. To Kill A Mockingbird. I wonder why anyone would kill a mockingbird or imagine one and think to themselves to write all about it. Crime and Punishment . My heart delays a beat, my fingertips tingle, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched. The hairs on my neck are upright, but I bend, and my face is inches away from the glass case. The adagio is playing mournfully in my ears again, and I’m taking a deep breath, aggressive and expectant, hoping to catch a whiff of wet bark and a special something. The air smells like nothing.  I keep walking, rubbing the side of my bag against which the notebook leans on the inside. I’m thinking what could happen if I could just see inside a book, any book. The self-guided tour noise is over. There are five large rooms – for Romances and Other Fantasy, for Crime, Horror & True, for Mystery, and two for Literary Fictions. The large Literary Fictions room is for westerners, and the smaller one – only eight feet wide – has three books from every other continent. The plaque above Things Fall Apart says, “For Diversity’s Sake”, and I understand that there’s no point in pretending when the media no longer exists. I take out my notebook and write words, something to remind me to search old papers and journals for diversity of creative thought – from when artificial intelligence didn’t have a monopoly over creative writing.  Each room looks the same, books minted in glass with dark, hard covers that reveal nothing. I repeat the rooms over and over again, hoping something will change, willing the $45 to mean something. By my sixth loop, I’m crying, and my lips are quivering, but I’m not sad. There’s anger and hunger, and my stomach rumbles as if to amuse whoever’s watching. I repeat my lap a seventh time and strike my notebook for every time there’s a man’s name, and an eighth time for every non-western name – exercises to make the ticket price worth it. The people I started with are mostly gone, vanishing into the reception area, never to re-enter, wallowing in their own version of disappointment, I suppose. The glass casings are too thick to break, and when I loiter in the Romance & Other Fantasy room, I reach out a hand, touch a case. There is no one around, the watching chandeliers are only in the hallway, and my hand is on a case. I pretend there is a transfer of creative energy, like heat transfers between bodies of differing temperature, that this woman – Margaret Atwood – is making a special covenant with me.  “Hey, no touching!” It’s a grim-faced man drowning in a navy blue uniform. He swats away my hand, yells at me, calls me a grimy, rule-breaking hooligan – a thug. When I apologize, he notices my accent and mutters something crude about the immigrants. Then he walks me out, out of the room, out of the hallway, and out of the reception. I wonder if he’ll ask for my photo to staple to a board of criminals, but when I turn, he’s gone.  I sigh and stare into the begonias, wipe my tears although they have dried into my skin. I glance back and consider returning tomorrow, this time, measure the thickness of the glass cages, this time, come prepared with knowledge of stealth glass demolition methods. I think of Margaret Atwood and her glass case, wonder who she was and what she wrote. I may never know. Then I look at my phone screen. My mother’s birthday text is still there. All this life ahead of me, but what for?  I wonder, all the way back to Gainesville, me and my empty notebook. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, retreats, and more. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers .

Kendra Allen is a multi-genre award-winning author from Dallas, Texas, whose debut novel Like The People Do  is forthcoming in 2026. Kendra Allen was born and raised in Dallas, TX. She's the author of memoir  Fruit Punch , poetry collection  The Collection Plate , and essay collection  When You Learn the Alphabet , which won the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction in 2018. You can find some of her other works on, or in,  Oxford American, High Times, Repeller, Southwest Review, The Paris Review, The Rumpus , and more. Her debut novel Like The People Do  is forthcoming in 2026. BABY POWDER Winter here is mostly a mix of every other season. It’s spring; then sometimes, it all falls down. Way more ice than snow. Lots and lots of rain. It’s prolly why Daddy don’t leave with no clothes. When the day can start with a frozen windowsill, and end with ya back sweating out a bullet, it makes it hard to connect to any particular feeling, let alone if you need to wear a coat or not. If it was summertime, I think Mama might’ve cared more about the changes, cause summer got purpose, and consequence. It’s the only season where everything is seemingly the same kind of hot. People perspiring. Dogs digging and panting into the dirt. Brain fog overthrowing all of our structures. Popsicles melting. Those were the times Mama needed Daddy around to fix the A/C or something. Jumpstart the car. Pull up the weeds. Because she didn’t like to sweat. So when I got off the school bus and saw Daddy sitting in his truck with the engine running—although heat is what I was waiting to feel, the only thing that came was, bout time.  “I’m out.” he said.  “Ok.” I answered, “Whatchu want me to tell Mama?” “Nothing.” Daddy pressed into the steering wheel with one hand and pounded it with the other, “I want you to stay out of it Minnow, aight?” I shifted the straps on my backpack from one shoulder to the other, because these people make moderate sense to me. I mumbled I will I meant I guess I’ll see you later, then “Lock the door behind you.” “Ok.” “I’ll call you later.” “Ok.”  “Why you ain’t got no coat on?” “Can I have my phone back?” I asked.  “Nah. I bought you some food though, it’s on the counter.” “Ok.” “Love you.” he held his closed fist outta the window and I pushed my knuckles into his. When he grabbed my wrist, my palm opened and hung there. I looked at our hands and he looked at my forehead, and when Daddy said he was sorry for all this, I jerked my elbow back but he wouldn’t let go. He kissed my hand, and that was weird because I knew he’d done it before, but that was when I was little, so it made me uncomfortable now. I didn’t show it, or say it though. Instead, I asked if I could leave my backpack in his truck. He looked uncomfortable then, too, but it was a Friday, so I did it anyway. I tied the straps together, took out my school badge and slid it under the passenger seat. When I went inside, I washed my hands, then stood by the door eating and peeking out the bottom of the blinds. Daddy sat in the driveway for forty-three minutes, marinating—then, he shifted into reverse, and pulled off.  That same day the temperature dropped down to thirty odd degrees and by evening, it was ice all over the roads so Mama got stranded at work.  “Don’t worry bout me. I can stay with a friend.” she told me, “I know somebody who live close by.” “How long?” I put the house phone on speaker, “You think school gone get cancelled?”  “Just until the roads clear. And let’s hope not.” she laughed, “But if the power go out, you know what to do.” “Can I order food?” “Ion care whatchu do Mimi, just stay ya ass inside and don’t let nobody in my house.”  “ and don’t let nobody in my house,” I mimicked. It was my favorite pastime; pretending to be her. I boiled pots of water, the way she would. One for eggs—so I could make tuna fish the way she does; with a couple slices of fresh jalapeno. & the other pot, I keep it going to pour water over the pipes the way Daddy taught me to. When he took my phone, I’d skipped so much school that I was close to being expelled, but even now, I still might have to repeat the tenth grade. Mama say she proud of me for how long I stayed undetected; how it shows I got a big brain and some critical thinking skills, but Daddy say I done lost my damn mind and he gone help me find it. Unfortunately, everything around here gets hid in the same spots; and I was bored, so I found it; in the back room in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet right under the ashtray he hides his weed in. It was a pair of old sandals to the left and an extra-large sandwich bag filled with enough letters to break the seal’s lining in the middle. I poured all the letters out because there was nothing like the reveal of what you already know, and what I always envied: Mama not the type to hide. She packages and places things in your face, so you can’t see them. Like: if Daddy had happened to stumble upon twenty letters addressed to the mother of his child, she knows he wouldn’t explore the situation no further. The love he’d want to preserve would encourage him to stay away from it. Because Mama won’t lie. I sat on the floor and lined the letters up across the carpet by name, but when I saw they were all from the same person—somebody named Midday—I lined them up by date. I read from old to new and took notes inside of a book cover.  Midday addresses Mama as: Sweetness My love Baby  Lani (mostly)  Things Midday be doing: Dirty mackin’  Speaking in code Not being discreet  Begging Asking to pay Mama’s ‘lectric bill  cause you got a fire in ya When I finished my first round of annotations, I came to the conclusion that Midday—at best—must be old enough to be somebody’s Granddaddy. At worst, Midday and his letter writing must be the reason Daddy say he done messing round with Mama and her mess. There was some other man who loved her, too, and he ended every letter the same way: Come back to me, Lani. At first, that made my skin crawl, reading that, cause Mama had said only my daddy and her daddy ever called her Lani, but the more I read, I started feeling independent. Free. Like wind. Midday was acting like he learned how to write for her or something; all his thoughts too spiraled with longing for him to feel any shame. And it was something about that I respected—in anyone—to a certain extent. It also made me laugh, too—his whimsical nature—cause Mama don’t like that. She’ll say quick fast and in a hurry: “Get to the end Mimi, before I forget.” But Midday say: Lani, my love, do you remember when… or I miss you and the time we… and  if you leave him...  round letter fourteen, I understood him to not only mean Daddy, but some other people too, cause Midday kept letting it be known how much it hurts, for him to know Mama be out galivanting with people he know. He kept mentioning Tony and Cass, and somebody called Sample. But I knew Tony. He was married, and Mama said he can’t read, so I didn’t know why Midday was making him such a threat. But I never heard of Sample. I learned he liked to play a lotta pool, talk a lotta shit, and hold on tightly to Mama’s hand. I wondered if Sample was the reason Daddy moved out or if Sample was just the finest man in the world, cause that’s the way Midday was talking bout him; getting angrier and angrier by the letter. Defeated, he said, cause Mama belong[ed] to somebody else ; which made me think maybe Midday didn’t know nothing bout Mama at all. She always told me don’t ever confuse the love and respect men have for a woman tied to a man as respect or love for women. “Remember that !” she’d say, “If you don’t remember nothing else!”  I got up from the floor to go find pants and socks and a hat; and as I thawed the pipes, I wondered if Mama was at Sample’s house right now, pretending to need his help or being too prideful to accept it. When the ice melted and she returned home, she stood in my doorway with her heels in her hands. When she asked had I heard from Daddy, I told her no, and when she asked where he at, I told her he left. She said ok. But it wasn’t about being ok. It was about information. When I told her I read the letters, she asked if I had any questions and when I said no, we just kinda sat there gazing at different walls.  “You can keep ‘em,” she told me, “if you want.” “I don’t want.” “You might. For when you get older.” she yawned, “I wish I knew one real thing about my mama.” “I know a lot of real things about you, Mama.” “Yea, but, it’s never enough.” “Are you in love with Midday?” “Girl, don’t make me laugh. Midday ain’t nobody.” “What about Sample?” “Sample is a nice man. You should meet him.” “Cause you in love with him?” “Being in love don’t matter with men, Mimi. Plus, I only ever been in love with you.” “That’s kinda sad.” “I’m very happy.”  & I believed her.  The next time I saw Daddy, it took convincing; and on the way to school—when he told me I could have my phone back under one condition—that I don’t give Mama his new number—he couldn’t convince me. I understood the circumstances, but it didn’t make no sense to me how someone who shares a child can get to make the choice to not speak, so I unbuckled myself and climbed in the backseat. “You getting older now,” he looked at me in the rearview, “things are changing, and I think you old enough to not need a middle man. You can speak for yourself, can’t you? That ain’t never been a problem before.” Those were his words. His phrasing. The prompt. & although I hadn’t seen him in days, that felt like all he was doing—talking, to fill in the gaps to where my questions would be. He rambled on about change and growth and the state of our family structure and I listened, but when he was done—and I asked if he decided to leave because Mama like to have her options, or was it because he was embarrassed that other people now knew about Mama having options—he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and didn’t reopen his mouth. I looked outta the window. I felt away, and reconsidered. Repositioned. And that angered me; how angry I was beginning to feel towards him. I didn’t have to look at him to know what he was doing in my peripheral. I knew his hand was on his face, pulling, at his beard. I knew the sigh he had let out would be his last big breath until I got out. And I knew he thought my question was me picking a side.  When I slept over, the place felt familiar; like I had been there before. After I showered, I sat on the couch and Daddy told me his friend Ronny used to stay there.  “The one be cheating in spades?” I asked. “The one and only.”  I liked the apartment. It had one bedroom and one bathroom, and one door, but Daddy had redecorated the place with black and red and a vulgar disposition. He needed help. He was sinking into the seat; just sitting there, like a stump. I got his keys and ran downstairs to get my backpack. I had lotion inside. When I sat back down, I started to feel sorry about not being able to feel sorry, so I grabbed one of his hands. I think the gesture surprised him—or jolted him back to life—because he flinched as if I was a stranger and it made me rethink my own touch, even as I proceeded. His palm skin was soft, but the covering was as cracked as a map. I rubbed the lotion into my hand first, before kneading his. There was no reason to be so ashy. I figured it was from his mechanical work, but most likely, it was from bogarting the remote. He always held on to it too tightly. Over the years, I learned how to wait it out; would lay across the bottom of they bed looking back every once in a while to see if he’d doze off—because the next step was a snore—and a snore is when I could pounce and change the channel. But most times, when I looked back, all I’d see was Mama with her leg wrapped around Daddy’s waist. He’d be tracing her thigh with his other hand, and she’d always have her head right in his armpit, so she could fall asleep first.  “I’m sorry I made ya Daddy feel bad,” Mama say when I tell her, “I really am. But, I think this is for the best; the decisions we made.”  “Can I go stay with him for a lil while?” I asked. I leaned against her doorway and watched her head turn from Sample’s shoulder. He had his fingers on her thigh—not tracing like Daddy did—but squeezing. I wanted to frame the image for them both, because I thought Mama looked really pretty, laying there. She felt wilder, and Sample stayed quiet when it came to my Daddy, so I liked him a lot. “You sure?” she sat up, almost frowning.  “I’m sure.” I said, “Just for a lil while. You got somebody. Daddy just got me.”  “Minnow, that’s not yo responsibility. You wanna save people,” she said, “iono where you get that from, but you messing witcha own feelings and saving folk ain’t no way for no girl to start living her life. You not gone ever stop. And you gone be bitter when you never get thanked for it.” “It’s just so I can see him more Mama, dang.” “I guess that’s ok,” Mama got up out the bed, to hug me, “But make sure it’s only a lil while.”  At my new home, I kept thinking about what was quietly being said about my life. That for the rest of it—when I am a woman—and they are them—the only thing I’ll have is what I got—an offer. A helping hand. Not a romance for the ages, but for an overly-extended moment. I saw my parents as a success story, but over dinner—when Daddy asked how Mama was doing—I saw it as a step in the wrong direction. I reached for the sake between us, and when he didn’t knock my hand away, I poured myself some, and swallowed. “You know Mama;” I answered, “she always aight.” Daddy rippled his fingers on the table and made a slight beat. The whites of his eyes were always mineral-like and red ever since. Glassy. I didn’t know what to do, but I was tired of him acting so helpless and alone when I gave up my room and hadn’t missed a day of school for us to be together.  “Daddy, you still love Mama after all this?” I asked, “Like, still wanna be with her love.” He shrugged his shoulders. He was insane, and I didn’t know what to do, but I was starting not to care about nobody’s pain. When I went to see Mama that weekend, Sample was sitting on the arm of the love seat eating corn nuts and talking long, and I was dozing off on his story, until he got to the point. “I know it’s crazy how all this happened,” he told me, “But I love ya Mama. I always loved ya Mama. Been waiting on her forever. And I woulda kept on waiting, too. But now that the waiting ova wit, I just wanted you to know, lil Minnow, that I love you, too.” I threw my neck back to look up at Mama, who was looking down at me. She was greasing my scalp, and we both looked over at Sample, before looking back at each other, and laughed so loud all Sample could do was join in laughing, too. He threw corn nuts at us and held in his smile, but I knew he was feeling good. Important. When I turned to ash Mama’s cigarette, I caught him staring at her, and when he caught me staring at him, he winked at me. “What they call you Sample for?” I asked.  “When I was a lil boy...” “Everything ain’t happened when you was a lil boy, fool.” Mama was still laughing, “Just finna create the story on the spot.”  “You can call me Sutton.” he said, “That’s my name. But only you.” “What Samp tryna say Mimi,” Mama said, “is we think we gone go head and get married.”  They both stared at my scalp, and I’m sure I said something agreeable back, but I don’t remember. I just turned my face to Mama’s knee, so she could get my edges good. Mama and Sutton wore all black to the courthouse, and when they both forgot to write down some vows, I knew it was a sign they would do really well together, and for a really long time. That felt true to me, but it was a definite for Daddy. When I waved them away to their weekend honeymoon, I drove Daddy’s truck directly to the park around the corner like he told me to. He said he’d meet me there, cause we needed to talk. I figured if not about the wedding, then about getting my permit, but when he showed up, he wanted to talk about the future.  “Whatchu think about moving?” he had brought supplies to paint with, and a blanket. He looked put together that day, like he had places to be. “Move?” “Yea… maybe Shreveport or uh, uh… Mississippi. Maybe even uh, Corpus… Lubbock... if you wanna stay in Texas.”  “If I wanna stay in Texas?” “You can start over at a new school, I can start—” “We don’t got no people in none of them places.”  “I know that, Mimi.” “What about Mama?”  I asked, only because everything about us is about Mama. Daddy didn’t answer, but he look disappointed by the question; like he didn’t get what I wasn’t getting—that he could no longer care about Mama. He asked for his keys back, and started packing up the paint supplies. The mini canvas’. The brushes. The tubes of dollar store watercolors. He poured our rainbow water outta the Styrofoam cups and into the grass and was acting like he wasn’t the one who packed up and left.  “I don’t wanna leave Mama.” I stood to my feet and wiped an orange stain onto my black dress with the yellow flowers all over it.  “So stay.”  “Whatchu mad at me for?”  “I’m not mad at you.” he said, “Why would I be mad at you?” “Cause you always acting like you mad at me.” I said, “Every time I try to talk to you, you acting like you mad at me.” I said I don’t wanna move I said I like living with you I said But I don’t wanna move “I’m sorry about today and all the stuff she did, but you just gotta get over it. Wait until I’m eighteen or sum. Iono. But we not moving.” I stood there, but he didn’t respond. He reached out his arm for the keys. I hesitated. Gripped them tight, but decided to put them behind my back. As Daddy continued to tidy up the earth around us, he asked me to at least unlock the door so he could put the stuff inside, and I knew then—no matter what happened—what was said—by fall, he would be gone. So I kicked my painting into the water, and threw the bottles and the blanket. The only sound was my limbs whipping through the air. He stood there and stared—waiting for me to finish—so I threw the keys in the water, too. And when Daddy tried to hug me, I knew for sure he would really leave me here, no matter what I did. Even as he said he would never leave me. Even when he said I’m always welcome. Even when he said he wants me to come—it didn’t matter, because all I heard, and all he meant, was: “I gotta do what I gotta do.” THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Kendra Allen and Jae Nichelle on June 30th, 2025. Thank you so much for sharing “Baby Powder.” It’s such a compassionate portrait of a defining moment for the people in Minnow’s family. Where did you begin when conceptualizing this story? Ahhhhh!! Thank ya’ll so much for giving it a home. I feel like to some extent, mother/daughter dynamics are always showing up in my work, naturally, but with Lani and Minnow, I was fascinated by what it feels like to have a mother you’re in somewhat awe of; rather romantically or admirably, Minnow has a soft spot for the woman she believes her mother to be and she respects the character of her mother due to the truth-telling that takes place between them. Lani’s ability to accept the reality of her decisions endears Minnow to her more, and I wanted to build a story out of that acceptance, and I wanted a write a child who didn’t shy away from pressing into the fabric of her family’s current dysfunctions.  Agency and choice are huge themes in the story. Lani likes to “have her options.” Minnow’s father chooses to leave, and Minnow has to decide if she’s leaving or staying. How did you navigate Minnow’s complex agency as a dependent teen, yet one seemingly given a lot of freedom? Was this challenging? It was definitely challenging because freedom doesn’t exist for any child. I knew this was a reality that would have to almost slap Minnow across the face—this realization that even if she thinks she’s making the calls—choices have—and will continue to be—made for her, even when she’s caretaking. I think it was important to show how even if we see the power Minnow can wield as a middle man—at the end of the day— that power can only ever look like freedom on Minnow. Parents can make her optionless whenever they feel like it. Eventually, I wanted to move Minnow away from the narratives and backstories she sometimes creates on the spot as a way to cope with all the abrupt changes of her homelife and have her easy-goingness—her adaptability— to not come to a halt, but to boil completely over. To have the reader see her as who she should’ve always had the chance to be—a kid; and that took me years to figure out, that she had to become one when it was seemingly too late. I knew once that veil was broken, Minnow’s needs would be different, and because of this, she wouldn’t get the response she deserved due to her parents seeing her—burdening her—as someone who knows better instead of them having to do better.  In 2023, you  mentioned in an interview  that “Childhood, memory, patriarchy, (In)fidelity, death, mental health, water, and hands” are recurring and important themes in your work. And indeed, some of those show up in “Baby Powder.” Are there any other themes that have crept up into your writing recently? Ancestry, ambition, redemption. Grief been a big one for about two years now. Maybe repression, and how it informs desire. The elasticity of intimacy. Lots and lots of yearning. Tenderness, too. Those last three have caught me way off guard. It’s been tripping me out, how quickly they’ve shown up and how much they fight to stay and how much I want them to lead, now.  You are the author of an essay collection, a poetry collection, and a memoir. Not to mention your forthcoming fiction projects! Do you view these works as separate entities or have they all informed one another? Everything I’ve ever written was informed by the last thing I wrote. Ain’t no fresh, untouched ideas over here! I’ve learned each new thing is—in some way—is tryna answer, discover, or describe something better than it did in the last essay I failed to be fulfilled by. That maybe the medium of the new thing has to change, or the genre has to shift, and that very real thing needs to turn into a made-up thing. A poem. Whatever. But within that, there’s always a flow, there’s always a circulation. It’s never about not having something to write about more than it’s about equipping yourself with information, so you can have the curiosity and stamina for what needs to be explored once a thing is “done.” Because it’s never done, and none of it stays separate for me for long. It all goes back to those themes—those things are endless .  What has been the most unexpected event in your literary and publishing journey thus far? Writing fiction, for sure .   Every day it’s like, Girl, what is you doing, and why is you doing it ? You previously wrote a music column for Southwest Review, so I have to ask: what’s on repeat on your playlist these days? Ahhh! Ok, Destin Conrad for like two straight years, but on the daily, “Jumpin’.” It’s the best song I’ve heard in a minute. I can’t even express how good it is. Listen to it with headphones! Besides that, “Vibes Don’t Lie” by Leon Thomas, “Sudden Desire” by Hayley Williams, and “Come Home To God” by Amaarae. Mind you, I think every single one of these songs is perfect. What’s a personal landmark in Texas you wish more people knew about? Southern Skates How can people support you these days? By reading more books by Black women, and talking to people about them.  Name another Black woman writer people should know.  Jameka Williams! American Sex Tape still be on my mind. Also, Sasha Debevec-McKenney debut collection Joy Is My Middle Name will be out in August! Both books everyone needs.  ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Click here to support Torch Literary Arts.

Tianna Bratcher (they/she) is a Black, queer, genderfluid poet. They are a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, a fellow of Tin House, Open Mouth, The Watering Hole, and Griot's Well. A 2020 semi-finalist for the Miss Sarah Fellowship and a finalist for the 2022 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Their work has been published in  POETRY, Muzzle Magazine , Shade Literary Arts , Stellium Lit Magazine , Ink Well , December Magazine , and elsewhere. Tianna is an alum of Randolph College’s  MFA in Creative Writing program. They are a big sister and aspiring movie critic who is infatuated with vampire media, the lives of trees, and collage-making. Left Eye calls me after the breakup I knew what I’d find in the ash. Gut the wolf, girl. Drag his name across the coals. Don’t you think we owe every mother before us? We were born to bruised women. Vengeance is an heirloom. Show him what hell is how wrath swallows bones spits them into flames. Char his name with the temper of your voice. Girl, speak up. Be vibrant in your rage. Be guided by the passion of surviving Listen, they give us the tools to kill ourselves and take issue when we survive. Who you think poured the gasoline? Gave me the matches? Yeah I started the fire. I mean the man who hit me still calls me crazy even after my death. Maybe I am what he says ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.