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Rakaya Fetuga tells stories through prose, poetry, and performance. From the age of 17, Rakaya landed upon London’s poetry scene, and since then, her words have taken her TV & Film Festival (2024) and Royal Holloway University of London (2015 & 2016), as well as winning poetry competitions such as the Roundhouse Poetry Slam (2018), Rakaya’s words spark joy, challenge, and inspire

POETRY BY DEAD MEN A black screen. Muffled noise and music in the background. NADIA (O.S.) Sienna plays dress up in a green dress -- Naomi and Nadia tell Sienna they're pregnant -- Sienna reads poetry

Her poetry explores immigration, language, womanhood, and Black familial structures, blending lyric intensity Her work has appeared in Bloodroot Lit. , Clamantis , and Frontier Poetry , where she was named a finalist

Her poetry has been published in Southern Cultures , Apogee ,  Scalawag Magazine , and elsewhere. She performs in Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill based poetry reading series'. Nina was a featured performer at NC State’s Gregg Museum of Art and Design. I can’t understand most of her poetry. 9. I ask God about poetry and God says veins, the ocean, the dirt (meaning earth).

Idza Luhumyo was born in Mombasa, Kenya. She studied law at the University of Nairobi, earned an MA in Comparative Literature at SOAS--University of London, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University.  Her writing has appeared in various publications, including Transition Magazine ,  African Arguments , the  Masters Review , and the  Porter House Review . Her short story, "Five Years Next Sunday," was awarded the 2021 Short Story Day Africa Prize and the 2022 Caine Prize for African Writing. Other awards include the Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award and the Civitella Ranieri Writing Fellowship. She currently lives and works in Austin, TX. But That's a Long, Long Time Ago There's something calming about being stuck in an international airport, for hours, watching the world go by as you remain still, waiting to hear a voice call out your flight number. You're at peace, serene even, in spite of the uncomfortable seats on which you can only sleep in fits and starts. In spite of the dubious Wi-Fi that you know you shouldn't trust but to which you connect anyway. In spite of the fact that anytime you have to use the bathroom, you have to work out the complicated math of lining the toilet seat with tissue paper and then arranging yourself over it as you try to hold on to your carry-on luggage. You are on your way to a short story festival in Cork, the second-largest city in Ireland. You set out from San Marcos—the small, charming city in Central Texas that houses the Creative Writing program in which you are enrolled. You are taking this trip because, in a lucky sequence of events, which you suppose is how these things tend to go, a short story you wrote many years ago won a major prize. The journey to Cork is long, and it has been a long time coming. During the visa application process, you had to teach yourself how to trust American couriers with your passport and not think of the many ways everything could go very wrong. Once, things do in fact go wrong: when your passport with the visa stamp is returned, someone in the leasing office makes a mistake. Yes, it was delivered to the office, they say to you. But for the life of them, they cannot remember to what apartment they sent it. There is a moment there where you forget how to breathe. The person you are speaking to is chirpy and casual, typing away on the keyboard as she tells you, coolly, that your passport—this bright blue booklet of a document without which you cannot travel, or prove your right to be in the USA—is lost. Would you like to give it a day or so, she asks, see whether anything comes up? She is a sweetheart, really, the person saying these things to you, probably a Zoomer if her 90s-inspired outfit is anything to go by. She is the company's newest employee, one of those people who have a frantic aura about them: always rushing about, chewing fast, typing fast, talking fast, as if they had come to the world late, and were trying to play catch-up. Usually, when you come to the leasing office for your packages, you find her excitability charming, endearing. But as she finally looks away from her computer and tells you to go to your apartment and wait for your passport to magically appear, you pity her for the wrath you’re about to unleash. You tell her, in the quietest voice you can manage, that you will do no such thing. The clipped tone works: in less than an hour, your passport is found. # Cork is exactly how you expected an Irish city to be from the Irish novels you've previously devoured. Even though you've come to appreciate how big cities give you an anonymity that you disappear into, you're a small-town girl and find yourself charmed by how this rustic city seems to close in on itself, as if its buildings are huddling towards each other, keeping each other warm. Back home, in the artist circles in which you ran in your twenties, Ireland has always been looked on kindly because it shares with Kenya a brutal British colonial history. Your hosts are kind. Everything goes as planned: the taxi picking you from the airport; the drive through the rustic route to the hotel; the warm reception the next morning. At first, the restrained demeanour of the festival organizers is an adjustment: in the past year or so that you've been in America, you've gotten used to a certain fussiness, an outward friendliness that seems obligatory. But here, the pleasantness is at a remove, and people are more than happy to ease into silence when they run out of things to say. It is glorious. Maybe this is why you trust it. And even when the weather drops to single digits and you realize you didn't carry enough warm clothes, something inside of you thaws. # On the day of your reading, you stand in front of Irish writers and literary enthusiasts and read a story that pulls no punches in its critique of people who look like them. After your reading, there is applause. The sound of this prolonged applause will return to your mind when, months after the Cork trip, when back home in Nairobi for the Christmas break, someone at a literary gathering will remark that the African stories most likely to win literary prizes are those that criticize the very people who award them. But on that day, after you read your story, an elderly white woman walks up to you outside the auditorium and wraps you in a hug. You catch a whiff of Chanel No. 5 you usually scoff at, but which you start to like from then on. She calls you brave. Clutching your scarves and jackets, you walk down a cobbled path, and she tells you, a little haltingly, that she is a librarian and that she, too, is thinking of publishing some things she's jotted down throughout the years. She tells you that your bravery has inspired her to return to her writing. You hear yourself trotting out the writing advice you've heard throughout the years and which you, yourself, could use. You wonder what business you have offering writing advice to someone who's more than double your age and who, all her life, has worked with, and around, books. When you tell her you will be flying out in a couple of days, it is with a disappointed look that she bids you goodbye, but not before she points out, with barely-concealed urgency, the bookshops and coffee shops to visit before you leave. When you mention record shops, she points one out. Unbeknownst to her, the owner of the record shop is married to a Kenyan woman, and when you go down the stairs and tumble into this underground haven of sonic delight, you spend a lovely hour going on and on about 80s African music with someone whose enthusiasm belies the fact that he has never visited the continent. # Now that your reading is done, you allow yourself to have fun. You wonder if it's because your accent doesn't stand out as much, and that you spend as much time deciphering the Irish brogue as other writers try to understand your Kenyan English. You all have choice words about the British Empire, imperialism, the war in Ukraine. You redeem your drink tokens alongside the other writers and sit around a table and talk. In a corner of the room, a folk musician sits with a guitar, scoring the night with sparse chords about loneliness, lost love. You feel right at home in this famous brand of Irish sentimentality. A few writers sit away from the laughing group and brood. They sip and close their eyes. It's cold outside, but you're all sweating, taking off scarves and jackets and sweaters the more you laugh. You talk about writing rituals, Prince Charles III, Sally Rooney, Northern Ireland, Derry Girls, Trinity College, and, briefly, HBO's Succession when one of the writers is delighted you know how to pronounce Siobhan. You have your very first crush on a white man. Of course, he had to be Irish, your friend replies with a laughing emoji when you text her. # During mealtimes at the hotel, you’ve taken to looking for the tables that are tucked far away. You want to look at your phone and scroll away in chatter-free bliss. Some of the other writers, bless them, seem to notice and keep away, nodding and smiling every time your eyes meet. One morning at breakfast, you realize you've not spotted any other black person at the hotel. You feel guilty for only noticing this on the last day. But the guilt gives way to something like relief. Yes, you're the only black person at the hotel. Yes, you're the only black person at the festival. But contrary to how you often feel in America, you don't have the sensation of sticking out, you don't feel that a simple conversation will out you for being a different sort of black person altogether. # On the last day of the festival, after the first session of readings, you rush back to the hotel to grab dinner. The dining room is sparsely occupied, and most of the diners are elderly. The paneled walls and the perfectly set tables bring to mind a British pomposity that makes you smile. The time difference between Cork and Nairobi is only two hours. This makes it easier to keep up with Kenyan Twitter and Instagram in real time compared to when you're in America. You haven't been on social media all day. The idea is to find a table where you can scroll away in quiet bliss. You find one at the far end. You sit with your back to the room. The table has used utensils from the previous diners. On the top-right corner of the room, a TV shows a football game. Directly under the TV, a table with an elderly couple, sipping what appears to be the last of their drinks. You keep your head down, waiting for the maître d' to greet you and take your order. You've been lost in your phone for a while when you feel a shift in the air. You look over to the couple on your right. They keep sending looks towards you, and you keep looking back surreptitiously. At one point, you and the woman look at each other at the same time and send each other a smile. You are reassured. You return to your phone. Someone on your Instagram stories is giving a blow-by-blow account of a developing story about a Kenyan socialite. You're chuckling, you’re ignoring emails, you’re waiting to get dinner. After the reading, you hope you and the other writers will sample a little of the Cork nightlife. You even look forward to stealing a few moments with your crush. Your attention is drawn to your right again. Now, there are three: one of the waitresses has joined them. They are all facing your table. The waitress nods as the woman talks. On the older woman's face is a look you've seen often on your own mother's when she's giving someone a good scolding. You take out your earphones. The young woman—she couldn't be a day older than eighteen years—walks over to you, her cheeks flushed. You look over to the couple and they are shaking their heads, frowning. "Just unacceptable," the man says, still shaking his head. His voice attracts the attention of the other diners, and now looks are being directed towards you. The young woman, now appearing even younger than you'd thought her to be, starts to clear your table. You can feel the other diners' eyes. She is apologizing. Her eyes are watery. You feel a lump growing in your throat. You pinch the underside of your right arm, an old trick pilfered from a TV show, to forestall the tears you feel coming. You're not sure who you resent more: the restaurant staff who took too long to clear your table and get your order, or the elderly couple who pointed out the slight and turned you into a thing to be pitied. The waitress apologizes again. "Hey, it's okay," you hear yourself say. She nods rapidly, a smile on her face. Then, once she's stacked the utensils on her arms, she asks in a chirpy voice: "Did one of us seat you here?" The shift from the teary eyes to chirpiness is remarkable. "No," you say to her, haltingly. "I just came and sat here."  "I'm really sorry, I didn't see you, you had your back turned..." You tell her it's completely okay. That you only sat there because you wanted some privacy. It turns out you'd been waiting for half an hour. She takes your order. Your drink comes soon after she leaves. And then a couple of minutes after that, another server rushes to you with your plate of salmon, mashed potatoes, and a few celery sticks. You avoid looking at the couple on your right. You down the drink and then tackle the fish. The server returns to ask how you're finding the meal. You have about twenty minutes before the reading, so you ask for a cocktail. As you wait, the couple gets up. They walk to your table. "You had been waiting for too long on a dirty table," the woman says, as if you had only just come to the scene yourself. "We just couldn't sit there and watch that happen to you." You nod and smile, wishing that you had your cocktail already. Then the man, in a quiet conversational tone, tells you that they are English tourists. That he had long known of his Irish ancestry and that they were finally taking this trip to see some of his ancestors' burial grounds. This moves you. You feel bad about being previously annoyed. "And where are you from?" the woman asks you.  "Kenya,” you say. "Oh," she exclaims, clutching her husband's arm. She starts to laugh. "She grew up in Kenya," the man explains, chuckling.  The woman shakes her head slowly, as if she can’t believe the sheer coincidence of it all. "But that's before we got married," the man continues, taking on the role of his wife's interpreter. "She's still got some family there. Her father was sent there as an administrator with the British government. The 40s, it may have been? But that's a long, long time ago, I'm sure you were not born." "Oh no," you say, chuckling. "Kenya wasn't even a country then." He's laughing. You're laughing. You're all laughing. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the waitress from before, going to the kitchen with a stack of plates on her arm. You get up from the table. You've decided to give up on the cocktail. In a single file, the three of you walk to the cashier. And there you all stand, waiting to settle your bills. ### 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.

Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the North American Review, The Fire Inside Anthology Volume Phillips is completing her first full manuscript of poetry. saint handyman   damn us all for never praisin

Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Callaloo , The Columbia Review , Poet Lore , and elsewhere.

Mofiyinfoluwa O. is a Nigerian writer living between Lagos and London. Her work is concerned with the interior of African|Black womanhood. She is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program and The Founder of The Abebi AfroNonfiction Foundation. Her work has appeared in Guernica , Black Warrior Review , Variant Lit , Pleiades , Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her work has been selected as a Best American Essay Notable Entry (2022) and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is currently at work on her debut memoir interrogating the body, soul, spirit, and their relationship with desire. Victoria Island Blues We have always known that the land bears witness. That it watches. A thing does not need to have eyes to see. We are an expanse of land in the heart of Victoria Island; 2.7 acres of lush sprawling greenery, only a leap from Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue, only a leap from the mouth of the ocean. We have a thousand tiny corners where many dangerous and beautiful things happen. Muri Okunola Park is what they call us, but we know that we are more than just a park, more than green grass trampled underneath eager feet, more than just a place. Even then. A place can behold the clumsy knees of a teenage girl become the sturdy legs of a woman. A place can remain unchanged – dark green bars forming an iron fence, pillars of marble scattered across the field, a black gate that holds many secrets – as it watches a young girl transform every single time she sets foot on the body of our premises. There is no way to tell the story of M becoming a woman in Lagos without mentioning us. Long before the tendrils of womanhood even find her, we see her. It is a rare and beautiful thing to bear witness to the unfurling of a flower – to watch tentative petals reveal themselves in glorious splendor. And what is a glorious tale if it is not told? What is the use of all that beauty, all that danger, all that rage, if we keep it to ourselves?   6th August 2016.  The first time she sets foot on these grounds, M. is a seventeen-year-old girl desperate to be desired. You couldn’t see it, though. Unless you looked beyond her carefully manufactured confidence, her stellar grades, her mouth always moving, always distracting, always performing. But if you looked past all that, past the white off shoulder top she chose to wear that day for its ability to hide her entire midriff, past the funny-looking eyebrows she took hours to pencil in and conceal, past the constant fidgeting to make sure she looked fine – you would only see a young darkskinned girl attending a music festival. Lucid Lemons – the hottest hub for young creatives – is hosting a live show for alté musicians, and her sister, ear to the ground on the scene, had told her to be there. Just a few weeks ago, the tailor she met on the scene of her filmmaker cousin’s movie made her a pair of ankara shorts. Red flowers, yellow circles with splotches of white. The perfect fit to show some thigh whilst being high-waisted enough to keep her belly (oh the great belly) out of sight. That day, she is in the midst of a very delicate equation she is trying to balance: how to hide herself, whilst still showing enough skin to draw boys’ eyes, to make them see that although she is fat, although the inside of her thighs are almost black with the heat of constant friction, although she is terrible at makeup, she is still beautiful, still deserving of their eyes, their mouths, their hands. Still, she dances. With her feet in dainty white sandals in the late August air, she sways. Only a few weeks ago, she graduated from Olashore International School, and in the next few weeks she is off to Durham University in the cold cold North of England to study law. Oh, how she dreams of being a lawyer. All those blazers hiding her fat, flabby arms. All those long-sleeved shirts to conceal shoulders. All that brilliance she will radiate. She is certain, unshakably resolved to be a lawyer. And she has the brains for it. Her WAEC results are out any day now and she cannot wait for the rush of validation. Yes, there may be no boys who find her attractive enough to come and say hello, but the litany of As littering her report card will warrant the praise of her family, her teachers, and all her friends. Her iPhone 6 buzzes in her little white purse. Her English teacher, Mrs Emezue, is calling. Slightly confused, she picks up her phone, and a frantic, excited voice blares through the speakers ‘ Fiyin! Fiyin! WAEC results are out! Send me your details now! Let me check for you .' Squealing and jumping, the girl reels off the registration number she had memorized waiting for this exact moment. With bated breath, she waits as her teacher fishes out the results. A few minutes pass, and Mrs Emezue begins to scream with joy: ‘ My girl! My girl! My girl! All As and only one B (of course, she had a B in math) ! You did it! All As and one B!’  Her face cracks into a smile so big, it battles the setting sun for radiance. We see her then, realizing her own power, forgetting the boys for a moment, utterly pleased with herself. The sun will set, and Odunsi The Engine will croon ‘you’re my desire, gone around the world just to find her, omoge wa gbe mi saya’  and she will sing out those lyrics with reckless abandon – her voice lifting towards the heavens like smokefire, the voice of a girl trying so very hard to be enough for herself.    24th December 2017. Her skirt is short, so short that her thighs sparkle in their nakedness under the starless Lagos night. The skirt – faux leather embroidered with small red, green, and blue flowers – was bought with her mother in the New Look on Oxford Street nine months ago when she turned eighteen. An adult. And her body is starting to show it. The skin of her thighs is rubbed down with whipped shea butter and coconut oil, gleaming with a vengeance, pollen waiting for the touch of bees. Her top is deep red, baring her shoulders with waterfall sleeves that ripple in the evening breeze. An airy, round, perfect afro crowns her head steadfastly, and a velvet choker, encrusted with many silver hearts sparkling one to another – much like choreographed constellations – wraps the expanse of her neck. Gone is that shy and fidgeting girl of many moons ago. This is the M that has come into the knowledge of her beauty. She has spent the last many months shopping for clothes that fit her frame, shedding all that deadweight of insecurity, standing in front of her camera day after day, photograph after photograph, teaching her brain to look at her body and call it beautiful. If you check her camera roll, you will find many nude pictures, mostly in black and white; she has been cartographing the expanse of her body, rolls of flesh, a sprawling belly, stretch marks across the entire width of her back. She has studied her body like ancient scripture. Her endeavors have been fruitful. So fruitful, in fact, that in the months that have passed since we last saw her, she has obtained a lover that she obsesses over in a near-feral manner. He is sitting beside her now on the raffia mats spread across the park, the smell of chicken barbecue and burning herb dancing through the air as Bez is stringing a guitar and crooning seductively; his voice traveling over them in enchanting waves. In that moment, her gloss-coated lips spill open with laughter, time and time again, as the hands of the clock move nearer and nearer to midnight. No call from her mother. The freedom is delicious. And she is feasting fat on every single bite. D, beside her, reaches out to cover her shoulder with his arm and she lets him, lets herself feel the weight of a man settle on her, and she decides she likes it. On those mats, she is a budding flower unaware of just how bright her bloom will be.  28th of December 2019. Her belly is full of gin when she arrives at our gates. Beefeater to be exact. Straight from the bottle, no mixer, no chaser. No, she’s the one being chased tonight – those wide hips encased in deep red, the smooth brown of her shoulders bared to the night sky, lips a pulsing red sea perfect for drowning. Just a few minutes ago, she was at a wedding where men were tripping over themselves to get her phone number as she weaves and bobs between them with the ease of a woman who now knows how to handle men. The Uber ride from Elegushi to Victoria Island is only fifteen minutes, and in that time, she peels herself out of a sinfully tight black dress into an equally (if not more) sinfully tight red jumpsuit. She surprises herself with how deft she has become at navigating this city, this big and blooming life. Maybe there is  something about heartbreak that sharpens a woman’s senses. She would know. Five months ago, D said he could no longer love her. And she wept. Worried herself sick with errant thoughts of insufficiency. Wept some more. And then one day, tired of wallowing, she reached out to a man and swallowed him whole, and the tears ceased. Discovering this formula, the girl has developed a ravenous appetite for dick and alcohol (both in surplus in Lagos every December), perfected the calibration, and when she sets her feet on Muri Okunola Park that night, she is ready. Red, blue, and pink lights strobe from every corner of the park, and the air is thick with the sweat of bodies, the heady scent of too many joints burning at the same time, and music so loud it reverberates through her entire body as she meanders her way to the front of the stage where Show Dem Camp is booming their music. When Tec calls out to the audience for girls who are ready to come dance on stage, she does not hesitate. The security man hoists her up like she doesn’t weigh 95kg, and in that moment, she feels light as air as her gold-sandaled feet land on the stage. Her eyes are lined with laali, auburn and blond braids piled in the perfect ponytail. The bass is jumping and she begins to whine her waist, hips brushing from side to side, arms lifted in bliss as that jumpsuit cleaves to every inch of her body, its thin straps digging into the flesh of her shoulders as the fabric strains to contain the euphoria pouring from her. She sways from side to side, running her hands along the grooves of her belly, sticking her tongue out, grinning endlessly as she is being carried by the music to a very magical place. The energy is galactic, hundreds of bodies vibrating and chanting lyrics backed by the most electric live band as the stage is beamed in seething rays of red and blue and pink. There she is in this galaxy, entirely untethered, sensual and free - a woman who is dancing like she knows exactly what her body can do. If you look closely, you will see the back of the jumpsuit rides low enough to reveal the rolls of flesh she once desperately kept hidden. Now, she does not give a fuck. In that moment, nothing matters, not even the useless lair she wants so desperately to fuck, the one who has called her phone seven times now, not even him. She is ascendant, moving with the air, moving the body she taught herself to love, moving it with ease and gladness. On that stage, in front of all those people, in front of us, underneath the starless Lagos night, M. celebrates herself, and what we see is a woman ready to feast on herself, knowing she will be satisfied.  24th December 2021. They are both drenched in sweat when we see them, and god are they a sight to behold. He; head full of hair, a pink floral shirt with one too many buttons undone, a silver necklace shimmering in the darkness of night, and black jeans so tight, they could be another layer of skin. She – our girlwomanmagicbeing – is clad in an emerald green bralette, complete with ropes that criss-cross the skin between her breasts, free and unbound with nipples peeking to greet the night air. Her burgundy trousers, tight at the waist and flared towards her feet, have slipped much lower than their initial placement to reveal her waistbeads – all ten of them; red, gold, blue, and bronze, glittering and seductive in the midnight hue. It is another December and another Show Dem Camp concert, but this time she is not on stage. This time she is in the arms of a lover who sees her entirely, a lover her body calls siren-like, and he answers every single time. Their faces are split in these ethereal smiles as they exchange a tiny gold flask between themselves. No one else knows, but just before they arrived here, in a small hotel room off Ozumba, they split a heart-shaped pill into two, each person slipping their half into heated mouths chased with cold Orijin. It hit in the middle of the show. Rays of heat deep from the core of their bodies began to radiate outwards, a kind of cosmic energy beaming from within. Now, the girl is chanting lyrics, engaged in a full-blown rap battle of one: CHOP LIFE CREW, JAIYE TIMES TWO, AFTER ROUND ONE, SHE WANT TATOO. The words tumble from her mouth with a volume she didn't even know she possessed, ebullient and loud as she bounces from one leg to another, everyone around her staring in a mixture of amusement and mild confusion. She does not care. From her small red purse, she retrieves a perfect rolled joint. Oh. This is new. Slinging it between her deep red fingernails, she lifts it to her mouth, flicks her neon lighter against its twisted tip, and takes a deep drag as her eyes flutter closed. She holds it within her, seconds passing before she releases the smoke skyward. Her movements, seamless with the ease of frequency. She does it again, the skin of her bare face supple with sweat, shining. There is a serene beauty to her in the way her entire body rejects the performance of perfection. She is not sucking in her belly, not fretting about the downward slope of her breasts, not concealing the bags underneath her eyes. She is just a girl in a park in the city she loves, getting high with the man she loves. It is all so simple. She lifts the joint to W’s mouth, placing it between his lips, feeding him as her fingers brush his bottom lip, warm and supple. He smiles at her from underneath his eyes. A look passes between them, and we know they will soon carry their bodies away from here to do what they hunger for. To speak a language only their bodies understand. Looking at them, you would only see a young couple having fun in Lagos on Christmas Eve. But if you looked closer, you would see a small fresh scar underneath her belly button, obscured by the beads. Her eyes are slits now, blurred by herb and drink, but just a few hours ago, they poured torrents because her body refused to allow itself to be taken by the man she wanted to give it to. At first, we conclude that wholeness can be an act, easy to put on in a jam-packed field in the middle of Victoria Island. But then we watch her even closer – the move of her hips, the way her eyes light up when her lover traces the skin at the base of her neck, the way she closes her eyes to soak up all that music, all that joy, all that magic – and we know that even broken things possess their own wholeness, a cacophony of healing to rage against the silence of suffering and our girl from all those years ago is still here, still bending, still shifting, still becoming. She walks out of the park that night, and we wrap our arms around her, rejoicing over resilience and beauty, rejoicing over all the ways a girl becomes a woman who fights to be alive and whole, enough for herself in every season. ### 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.

My host mom and I had a wonderful relationship, but that Friday evening was the first time I had lied

In 2022, they earned their MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the University of Kentucky. Narrative Organizer for the Black Appalachian Coalition and as the Vice President of the Kentucky State Poetry

residing in North Carolina with her family, she is currently editing her first novel and developing a poetry

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.