Diary of a Seed by Aishamanne Williams

Aishamanne Williams

Diary of a Seed

Copyright © 2024 by Aishamanne Williams All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author. All names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. Book Cover by Eli Paola Vargas Photography by Aishamanne Williams

Aishamanne Williams

Dear reader, Thank you for holding this book in your hands, however it landed in them. It was written over the course of my 22nd year of life, so I chose to release it on my 23rd birthday as a celebration of who I am and who I’ll become. These stories and poems are not all about the same things and are not all about me, but the theme of this book refers to the lessons I happened to be learning during the time in life I was writing them. Growth happens in stages, phases, in the light and in the dark. Growth is the bad and the ugly that gives rise, eventually, to the good. I hope this work is a window into the garden I’m tending. I hope it reminds you to tend to yours. If you bear the face of peace while fighting invisible battles, I hope you remember to win the war with water. I hope you know the soil is always fertile wherever you’re planted.

No contents of this book are based on real people, places or events.

Diary of a Seed

Table of Contents THE BOX

A NECESSARY VIOLENCE

WHITE NOISE

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

SACRIFICES

CAMERA SHY

SEE LEVEL

MADE A DISCOVERY

104

DAYDREAM ON ORCHARD STREET

106

ERZULIE

125

FOREVER SIXTEEN

127

FORTY-NINE

151

I PROMISE

154

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The Box Today made three years since Sage’s father gave her the box. It sat now where it had been stationery since then, on the far right corner of her desk closest to her bed, collecting dust, memories and the fingerprints of basketball players. For some reason it made her skin crawl when women touched the box—even a lingering glance from Alice last week made Sage want to grab the box off the desk and chuck it out of the window. She hated when men touched or acknowledged it too, just a little less. She let their questions float smoothly away like a cloud passing through the sky. What’s in that box? Come see what’s in this one. It usually only crossed their minds when they were lying in Sage’s bed; she would hope that the weight of her curves atop their frame, her pink sugar Arabic perfume oil from Harlem, and her thick hair tickling against their skin would be suffice distractions from the haunting rectangle in the corner of their eye. But male curiosity tended to prevail. Dwyer asked about it once. It made her feel almost the way she did when women asked: defensive, exhausted, disturbed, exposed. Those, and something new. Cornered. 6

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There was nowhere to run to when he asked. Nothing to hide behind. When men asked before sex, she could use sex to distract them. If they managed to stay awake long enough to ask after sex, with her curls under their chin and their hand on the nape of her back, she could slide up to look them in the eye, caress their cheek and plant a kiss on their lips warm enough to melt all inquiries away. But Dwyer didn’t want sex that day. He came there to try to corner her—he wanted to; he just had no idea how well he’d succeed. He walked into the room with something on his back. Something she couldn’t see but could feel. It changed the energy of the space; brought a silence with it, a stillness, that froze her in place. It was too heavy for Dwyer to carry. His jaw was locked into a clench, his eyes at his feet or bouncing around the room, his brows tightened on his face. She sat on her bed watching him carefully from across the room as if the Thing could jump off his back and attack her at any moment. And it did. Dwyer thought he’d gotten distracted. Once he picked his eyes up from the floor, both he and Sage thought that he would look at her. But on his gaze’s way to meet hers, it stopped at the box. He’d been in her room more times than he could count. He’d seen the box before—he must have. It faded into the background before: just another piece of furniture, an unremarkable object in between her mouse and a stack of books. The book stack was the only thing in her room that changed often; she kept the three-to-four books she read at a 7

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time in a pile and switched them out as she completed them. Other than that, everything pretty much stayed the same. If you didn’t notice something the first time, it didn’t really stand out again. It was just Sage’s room. Sage’s stuff. But in that moment, when Dwyer’s main objective was to get the Thing off his back and Sage’s was to figure out what the Thing was and whether it could harm her, his eyes chose to see a box. Not stuff, but a fairly small wooden box with a gold lock on the front and floral engravings on top. “What do you keep in there?” Dwyer’s question did not float through Sage’s room like a cloud passing through the sky. It shot across the room and exploded in her lap. But there it was, the Thing weighing him down. And Sage somehow felt like she had to stay very still to not be noticed by it. Words froze in her throat; words she didn’t know even if she wanted to. They didn’t even make it all the way up to her brain before they were caught and stifled. “You heard me?” “What?” Dwyer stared at her, waiting. “That little box. What’s in there?” Sage could feel that her neck was stuck in place and she knew time was running out before it became noticeable. She could not bring herself to turn and look at the box any more 8

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than she could even fathom answering that question or why Dwyer asking it stirred her insides more than her mother asking when she would finally open it. But she knew she had to stay very, very still to stay out of harm’s way. She cleared her throat and let out a breathy chuckle. “Why are you sitting so far away?” Dwyer’s brows tightened even more. “I just asked you a question.” “You never come in here and sit all the way over there. You see me on my bed.” “Sage– “Are you good?” “I’m fine.” “So why are you sitting over there?” “It’s a seat. You put it here for people to sit in.” “You’re not people. That’s for guests. You’re in here all the time. Every time you come, you hug me when you walk in, you throw yourself on my bed, you tell me to put on some music or a show while you roll up and then we—do you wanna smoke?” In a few swift rageful steps that sent Sage’s heart beating almost out of her chest, Dwyer made his way over to her bed. He didn’t sit on it, just stood near it, the shadow casting a tall darkness over her. Not his shadow, its shadow. Something was wrong. So wrong it was palpable. 9

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But what the fuck did it have to do with the box? Before she could ask, as if she ever would, Dwyer suddenly picked up the box and stared at her with it in his hand like an angry parent with a report card. “Put it down.” The voice came from somewhere deep inside Sage; pushed up to the surface by the butterflies in her stomach. Dwyer could tell her tone was different. His jaw unclenched, but not from relaxation. He was confused. “What is— “Put it down. Now.” He chuckled in puzzlement. “Sage, I’m just— “Put the fucking box down!” She’d never yelled at him before. Not like this. A week prior they got into an argument when he raised his voice at her outside of a party and he was half as loud then, and drunk. They were both taken aback. Dwyer placed the box down on the table without breaking her gaze, so slowly that the sound of it finally landing on the desk seemed to echo through the room. It was his turn to freeze in place. He could see, and she could feel, that she had her own Thing now. 10

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“Sorry,” she whispered, eyes at her feet. Dwyer sat a few cautious feet away from her on the bed. “Why do you always avoid things?” Sigh. “I feel like every time I ask you some shit you find a way to dance around it,” Dwyer spoke these words to the wall. “Whether it’s big or small. You can never just have the same conversation with me that I’m having with you.” “And you always find something about me to have a problem with. Why do you always make it seem like everything I do annoys you so much?” “That is a new conversation, Sage. You see what I mean?” He looked at her and she wished he hadn’t. “I was just curious. It’s not even about the box. I always thought the engraving on it was pretty. I was looking at it just now and thinking about how I’ve never seen you open it.” Sage turned away from Dwyer to hide the softening expression on her face. He was annoying, and pushy, and whiny. But he also just wanted to know something about her, and he was here—two things which could not be said about the man who gave her the box in question. And Sage could feel a coldness rising inside of her toward Dwyer’s plea for vulnerability that she knew also came from the same place that the box did. So she swallowed and turned around. Dwyer was still sitting a safe distance behind her on the bed, waiting. She looked in his eyes and knew if she danced around the 11

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conversation again it would not only prove his last point correct, but it’d also be a bit cruel. Dwyer was imperfect and, at times, painfully unaware of it. But he was good. Good in the way that people who occasionally fuck up but always mean well are. Sage, on the other hand, was not good. She appeared to be good, she managed to behave in a manner publicly that convinced most people she was good, but she was not. She knew that. And she tried very often not to think about it—whichever category you place yourself in, what’s the use anyway?—but now here was Dwyer and he wanted the box open and those were facts Sage could not make go away. But her internal reactions to the conversation alone were reminding her that a bitter spirit had made a home in her, the same one that lived in her father, and Dwyer’s slight pretentiousness and commitment issues were nothing in comparison to that type of darkness. This made her both want to tell him about the box, for he was good and good people deserve the truth, and to keep it closed away from him forever, because good people don’t need to see scars. Sage heard a soft sigh from behind her. “It’s cool, Sage. If it’s gonna make you upset— “I don’t know what’s in the box.” She turned to make eye contact. “Huh?” He asked this in a manner that would make Sage’s mother tell him he can hear. “You asked me what I keep in there. I don’t know what’s in it.” 12

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“Has it not always been there?” Sage looked at the box. Past it, really, for an excuse to look away from Dwyer. She wanted to roll her eyes and throw her arms up. Not so much in annoyance at Dwyer, because now she was starting to feel a little bad for him, but in frustration at the whole thing. How fucking stupid. A box smaller than the Bible, sent to her by someone she didn’t think about before his death and hadn’t thought about since, causing all this trouble. Something she didn’t even ask for—the box, a father, his death, whatever he put inside. Just dumped in her room like a heavy burden. It was probably empty. I hope it is, Sage thought, ‘cause that means he and I share a sense of humor. “It’s been there for three years. Since my dad died.” A quick look of befuddlement at the mention of a father tickled Dwyer’s face like a dandelion, gently but present, and just as quickly floated away into the air. Of course he knew, theoretically, that everyone had a father, but the idea of Sage having one was new and a bit odd. The words always felt that way in her mouth too, new and odd like the first day of braces; my father. Sage was the type of person who just existed: extremely, memorably, defiantly, in a way that made you feel like she’d just always been here and always been that way. She existed so profusely that you forgot to wonder about her origins. Her past mattered less than her present, and how much she was affecting yours. 13

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She stared at the box and began recalling its origins. She was a freshman in college at that time, still under the impression she was going to finish, typing a paper at her desk in her room. Her mother entered with a tight-lipped expression and both hands clasped in front of her, the way you’d stand at a funeral. Sage was almost undisturbed by this countenance, thinking her mother was coming to have one of her pseudo-serious talks about keeping cleaner habits around the house or dressing less slutty, but then she looked into her mother’s eyes. Red and watery. It wasn’t that her mother didn’t cry often. It’s just, Sage thought, she only cries when something dies. “Your father is no longer with us. His sister mailed me a letter saying that he walked into the ocean last Sunday morning and drowned.” Her mother said it in such a matter-of-fact way, Sage could tell partially because she was trying to hold herself together and partially because she knew Sage didn’t harbor much sympathy where this matter was concerned. Sage knew this and still felt inclined to hug her mother—not to convince her that the news hurt, but because deep down it really did. But she stayed seated regardless. “On purpose?” Her mother nodded. “Did he leave a note?”

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“Not really, but,” she stepped out of the room briefly and came back in with a little wooden box in her hand, “he left this.” “Where?” “On the beach, in the sand. Left a note for his sister at the house saying to go to the beach, then left the box on the shore with a piece of paper that said to give it to you.” Sage frowned. “Where’s the paper?” “Your auntie didn’t send it. Said it got wet on the beach in the middle of—you know, the movement…grabbing his body and everything.” Her mother stopped like she’d been cut off by something. Sage reached out and grabbed her hand and they squeezed each other, holding a gaze, and then her mother let go and continued. “She told me the paper was sitting underneath the box and it said to give it to his daughter, not to ever be opened or interfered with by anyone but her.” Then she placed the box on Sage’s desk, and it’s been there ever since. Sage told Dwyer all of this. When he asked about a funeral she told him it wasn’t in this country so they couldn’t have attended if they wanted to (which she didn’t). She didn’t recount all of the details about how abusive her dad was to her mom and how she hasn’t spoken to him since he made the lone attempt to reconnect the year they got away from him and then gave up on them afterward, about how she didn’t want or need a father but subconsciously resented him for not trying to be one. Any 15

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memories she had of him were too distant and unclear to share with Dwyer; she hadn’t seen him since she was in preschool. So when Dwyer asked why she never opened the box, she said: “It’s like a parting gift from a stranger.” Dwyer nodded, digesting this, his head resting against the wall behind her bed for support. Then he picked his head up and leaned forward. “Do you think you’re scared of what might be in it?” “No,” Sage shook her head. “I’m not scared of it, I just do not want it. Whether it’s a bracelet or a note or whatever, I have no use for it or the awareness of what it is.” Dwyer smiled at her, and usually she loved his smile, but right now she hated it. “Open it.” “No.” “Why not?” “Why do you want me to?” “‘Cause I think you’re bluffing and avoiding,” Dwyer was no longer smiling. “And I know it’s not my place, but I don’t think that’s the real reason you haven’t opened this and I think you’re avoiding it like you avoid everything else.” “Bluffing?” She scoffed. He pushed the box into her hands. “Do it then.” 16

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Sage looked from him to the box and back and chuckled. “You’re serious.” He nodded toward the box. She sighed and pushed up from the bed. “Fine, but I don’t have the key.” “That’s an old box. The lock probably doesn’t even work.” “Well I don’t wanna break it. Let me go downstairs and look for a key in my mom’s things.” Dwyer sighed. “Sage.” She started toward the door. “Do you want anything to eat from downstairs? Or we could order something. I kind of want that Chinese food we had last time.” “SAGE!” “O-KAY!” She screamed with both arms in the air and slammed them down at her sides. “So-fucking-what I don’t want to open the box, it’s my box! What does it have to do with you?” “Sage,” Dwyer exhaled and stood up, paused, and tried again. “Sage, one day you’re gonna have to stop running from your demons and fight them head on.” She found this laughable and didn’t hide it. “I do not run from my demons, Dwyer. I’m friends with my demons, and my father’s too.”

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He shook his head. “You’re not supposed to be friends with your demons. You’re supposed to fight them and get rid of them.” “Well me and you fight all the time and you keep coming back every weekend.” Silence followed. Dwyer looked down at her, seeming taller now than ever before, with a strained expression. She instantly regretted what she said—Dwyer had always complained that her mouth was too quick and sharp, too clever. He pushed past her toward the door. “This is the last day you gotta worry about that.” Sage stood stunned watching him leave. When he turned, there was the Thing he walked in with on his back. A large, shadowy, unsettling something, taunting her. Threatening her. Calling her bluff. “Okay, Dwyer, fine! Relax. You’re dramatic and annoying but if you want to know what’s in the box so bad—” She flicked the lock with her acrylic nails and it popped right open, much easier than she expected it to. In fact, she didn’t really think about it at all before she did it. But now it was unlocked and the box was still closed and Dwyer stood in the doorway looking in suspended disbelief, so there was no going back now. When Sage lifted the lid, she couldn’t exactly place it. Not the contents of the box, but the emotion she was feeling. It maybe wasn’t even an emotion at all; there were cramps in 18

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her stomach but they weren’t painful, warmth in her eyes but no tears. She couldn’t understand what she was looking at, couldn’t allow herself to, but she felt somehow deeply connected to it. It suddenly felt like a parting gift from an old friend. Dwyer had taken a step closer to get a better view, but he didn’t come close. This looked and felt like a private moment between Sage and the two large pink seashells her father had left for her in this box, not to be interfered with by anyone but her. Sage and Dwyer stared at the seashells with the same expression. They were…seashells. It wasn’t clear why they were seashells, but they were, so Sage and Dwyer sat with that for a moment. “I’m gonna leave you to it, Sage,” Dwyer said this to her in a low tone, like there was someone he didn’t want to awaken. Sage looked up from the shells for the first time since opening the box and noticed something lighter about him. It was off his back, whatever it was. It was still here, floating across the room from him to her and into the shells, disappearing into a fog. The whole room was lighter— brighter, but just as heavy. Like monsters in the dark sticking around in the light. Dwyer walked out and left Sage ogling the shells, her palm growing sweaty holding the box, and then he turned and came back. “What’s the real reason you never opened the box, Sage?”

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She looked up. She hated questions—God, he’d asked so many today—but the answer flowed through her without a thought this time. “Same reason I don’t like blocking people,” she said. “Too final.” Dwyer smiled, understanding what she meant. He pointed at the box in her hand. “You know you can hear the ocean in those, right?” Sage rolled her eyes. “I’m serious,” he said. “Hold it to your ear and you might hear his spirit.” Sage smiled too now, but out of pity for him and the purity of his optimism. “I don’t think so.” “How come?” For the first time, she ran a finger over one of the shells. It was cold, which sent chills down her spine when she imagined that the shells were one of the last things her father’s hands touched while he was still warm. “Sometimes,” she said with a calm expression, “there really just isn’t anything to say.” Dwyer nodded, watching her cradle the shell in her hand like a small bird, and then walked away. “Wait, D,” Sage called. “Yeah?” He returned. “Why’d you seem upset when you came over today?” 20

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Dwyer chuckled. “Oh, ‘cause I went through your phone last week and found out you cheated on me. I was gonna confront you about it today.” “Cheated on you?” Sage scoffed. “Okay, even if I did sleep with someone else, how can I cheat on you when we’re not even in a relationship?” “Call it whatever you want, Sage, but I think you know the difference between right and wrong.” He tilted his head at her, knocked the wall with his knuckles as he sometimes did on his way out, and gave her one last look. “See you next weekend,” he said. Then vanished. Sage smiled when he was gone, then looked in front of her and saw a mirror. She stood there, a girl holding a seashell with thick hair framing her smooth face. Sage placed the box down on her desk, raised the shell to her ear, and listened.

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Diary of a Seed

a necessary violence my brother and i bear a face that we can’t remove his beauty reeks of a lineage sullied so i treat his eyes like the sun they hold me in warmth, thick and honey-sweet, but the fire behind them is one i know it gave all the scars to my heart and left my flesh cold. i crossed seas just to touch the flame a whisper said they’d lick me with salvation we sat on the shore and he taught me to count the waves one, two, three, four there are tears my brother and i can’t shed so we count God’s tears instead he shows me his escape routes but we don’t talk of what we’re running from i hear all the words he won’t say in the wind i taste the blood of his enemies on my own lips the same blood that makes us kin i crossed seas just to touch the flame i returned as ashes saltwater can’t quench my thirst or piece together my fragments the moon is so pretty and so meek, with a dark side we don’t ever see. i fear its face like i fear my own, with all its craters i should break my bones, shed all my layers, but the world doesn’t want to see the gore of these wars they don’t want bombs bursting in air just send thoughts and prayers. 23

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one day there will be a tsunami a necessary violence my brother and i will scoop with a cup and sip one, two, three, four we’ll swallow our rage, crumble the sky, scorch the earth, and in our hearts there will finally be silence.

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White Noise The sun shined differently in Harlem. I couldn’t place what it was. It was the same star it had always been, same number of miles away from me (something like 93 million; it had been two years since I took the SAT but I remembered that fact because I had a crush on my tutor), serving the same function it always had. Yet here, in Harlem, it felt like the sun had a different attitude. It used to pour into our Bed-Stuy windows gently, gradually; growing with intensity as we grew more awake. By the time I’d got my eyes fully open and had snoozed my alarm for the fifth time, I was ready to welcome the light. But whatever sun they had here didn’t pour in gradually, it just opened the window once it was ready and made itself right at home. And it wasn’t the silent sun I always knew. This one brought sound effects—as soon as it rose and made its unwelcome entry into my bedroom, so did the chatter of the men who hung out on the block and the glaring horns of morning traffic and the bouncing of a basketball on the pavement and the yelling of a girl cursing her boyfriend out over the phone (and his voice too, since they’re always on speaker). The sun then became no longer a gentle recommendation to start my day, but rather a violently sudden awareness of being awake and a reminder that despite whether I was ready or not, Harlem’s day had already started. So my eyes were open. 25

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I laid in bed with my head facing the wall, away from the window. We finally got curtains so the light wasn’t as bad this morning, but I preferred staring at the little dents I’d made in the wall over the past two months of living here and scratching the paint with my acrylic nail every day than looking at those curtains. My father called them ‘vintage,’ which meant they were hideous. They’re burgundy-andbeige paisley curtains from an old decor store he discovered on a walk around the neighborhood; I saw them from the window and just had to pop in. So many little things to discover when you just explore around here, Jayna. I didn’t want to discover or explore. I wanted to go home. “Next week is too damn late, P. Run me my money yesterday!” A familiar voice was shouting outside loud enough to travel up two stories and into my room. I’d never seen her face but I always heard her: experiencing the same emotion, at the same volume. Different problems, always P. I turned over to look at the window and found one of the curtains was still open. I stomped over to close it, stomped back to my bed, and threw the covers over my head. If I could not have quiet, I was going to have darkness. Then another sound entered, this one from one story down. It was a pounding coming from the floor, which meant Ms. Leary was knocking her ceiling with her broom again. I rolled my eyes and let out a sigh that felt like it lasted minutes. This time when I got out of bed, I threw the covers off with a force that sent them across the room. I walked to the 26

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door, swung it open, and was already taking steps into the hall when I saw my dad standing there. “Oh, I was just coming to get you. I made something.” He said this with a mischievous smile on his face and a wooden spoon in hand, glancing from it to me and back. I sighed. “I’m not hungry, Dad.” “How do you know if you’re hungry or not? You just woke up.” “So how about I wait and take a second to find out first?” “By the time you start feeling hungry you’ve already waited too long, Jay.” He spoke these words like I’d never heard them before, but I had, and several times. His mother used to say it to him when he was little and defiant (“much like you now”) and he’d say it to me when I would lock myself in my room on mornings when he and mom were arguing. I think he felt like it was easier for them to be at least a little nice to each other when I was in the room, but it just made things silent and awkward. “And weren’t you just heading out of your room anyway?” He continued. “Yeah. I was,” I paused and pointed downstairs, “about to follow up on a noise complaint.” My dad smiled and nodded silently, then dropped his voice to a low whisper. “Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. I’ll blame it on me—say I was hopping around your room 27

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because I couldn’t contain my excitement about how good these…” He glanced at the spoon again, then back to me, his face covered with the grin of a child waiting to be found in a game of hide and seek. “Pancakes?” “Pancakes! Whew, girl, you better come down and get some of these pancakes before they disappear.” He started down the hallway. “How’d you guess? You smell ‘em from up here?” I followed behind him, laughing. “There’s literally batter on the spoon.” He looked at the spoon and shook his head. “My baby is too sharp. Can’t nothing get past you.” “Doesn’t take a Harvard degree to figure that one out,” I mumbled. “Speaking of that,” he started while we walked down the steps. “Can we not?” “What, speak of it? I try not to most of the time, JJ, but I’m just holding you to your goals. If you don’t start sending some applications soon, one gap year will turn into two and two years ain’t a gap. It’s a change of plans.” “Good morning.” 28

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We stopped at the second floor and saw Ms. Leary standing in her doorway, waiting. Tight-lipped, grayhaired, death-glaring little old lady. Annoying as they usually were. I returned the greeting without looking at her and proceeded downstairs while my father chatted with her for a bit, probably listening to her complaints about me and reminding her that she’ll get the rent next Monday on time as always. I tried to exchange as few words with her as possible; she was generally unpleasant and, to be fair, so was I. But my father was the kind of person who could melt the unpleasantness in anyone with a few goofy jokes and an equally as goofy smile. (Except my mother.) Downstairs there were indeed pancakes sitting on the kitchen table, and suddenly I confirmed that I was hungry. I grabbed syrup from the refrigerator and decided to wait for him at the table, listening to the sounds of Lenny Kravitz’s music coming from the record player. My father was also the kind of person who, if you knew him already or even met him a few times and you found out he listened to Lenny Kravitz, you’d go ‘Oh. That makes a lot of sense.’ He came downstairs finally and into the kitchen. “You didn’t have to wait.” I shrugged. “You handled it?” Dad smiled and nodded toward upstairs. “Ball of joy, that one.” He sat across from me at the table and we started digging in. With a full mouth, he started again: “Like I was saying, Jay, it’s no pressure,” he stopped to sip some water and 29

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swallow, “but you graduated high school at the top of your class. You’re too intelligent to not be continuing your studies.” I kept my eyes on my plate. “The plan was always to take a gap year after graduation.” “Yeah, but then, you know. Things changed.” Oh, right, you mean when you and mom got a divorce and she left us for Europe and a white man. This thought was true but the words didn’t need to be said, so I kept them. “I just needed some time to recoup. It would’ve been pretty hard starting a semester while everything in my life was so…unsettled.” “And I get that, Jay. But look!” He opened his arms and gestured around us, at the kitchen we sat in and the living room behind us and everything in this dusty old brownstone that, excluding decor, was prettier on the outside than the inside. “We can settle now. We’re settled. We got this place, I should be getting a better job soon, you could even apply to Columbia. There’s only one Ivy in this city and it’s closer to you now than where we lived before. Ain’t that perfect?” “No, Dad. It is not.” “Okay, fine, then it doesn’t have to be Columbia. Where’s better? You can get in anywhere you want.” I shrugged and kept looking down. “I don’t know. Oxford.” 30

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There was just the sound of Lenny Kravitz and silence. When I looked up my father was twisting the fork around his plate. It was rare that something bothered him or hurt his feelings, which is why it was always so obvious. He’d always get quiet and start fidgeting with something, acting like he didn’t even hear whatever was said. I sighed. “Okay, dad, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I don’t wanna go to England and be with mom and that guy and his speedboat. But I also don’t want to be here. And going to school near here will just make me have to stay here longer, and then I’ll get comfortable and end up spending the rest of my life here and I’ll be bitter and aggravated by the end of it, like,” I gestured toward upstairs where Ms. Leary lived. “I don’t want that for me.” Dad nodded slowly and then tilted his head slightly to the side. “I see. Sounds like you’re scared you’re going to end up liking it here.” “No, I’m scared to end up stuck here,” I said. Here or anywhere, really. That was the whole point of taking a gap year; I wanted to explore life for a bit, enrich myself with experiences, travel a little, figure out what I wanted to do. Besides the fact that we couldn’t even afford to do any of that anymore, I also didn’t feel like it. And there was no time. So while my friends from high school were experiencing their freshman year of college, I was pretending to be enjoying a restful hiatus. In reality, I was listening to my parents argue every day waiting for them to realize they needed a divorce, then watching our money deplete from said divorce, then dealing with my mother who’d found a love strong enough to bring her to a different continent 31

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while mine and my father’s wasn’t enough to keep her on this one. Then I watched my father go through the process of selling a house we could no longer afford, finding a new place, begging and pleading with him not to drag me all the way uptown. Obviously, I didn’t beg hard enough. “Jay, stuck is a mindset.” As soon as the words left his lips, I was already rolling my eyes. “No, really. I mean, sometimes you’re stuck somewhere, and sometimes it just feels like you’re stuck because you think you would rather be somewhere else.” “I would rather be in our old place.” “Because you knew and loved that place.” He took a moment to glance out the window. “I knew I wanted to end things with your mom maybe a year before the divorce. You know that?” I sat up for this. He never liked talking about it. “It wasn’t hard to tell. You guys used to get along well and then you just started fighting all the time.” “Yeah, it was rough. And I knew something wasn’t working. But I didn’t just up and leave. I stayed in the marriage and tried to re-explore it. I wanted to discover what was wrong—was I really stuck, or did I just feel stuck?” “And I’m guessing it wasn’t the latter.”

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He nodded. “Of course. But I wouldn’t have known that if I just left the minute things felt wrong, instead of sticking around to find out what feels wrong and why.” “I feel like you’re trying to make a point.” “I feel like you know what it is.” He smiled. “What, that I need to give Harlem a chance?” “Let Harlem give you a chance,” he said. “I was going to take you out today, plan a fun Saturday with Dad. But I think maybe you should go out today—and I don’t mean running downtown with your little friends. Stay in the area, walk around, let it inspire you. Give it a couple hours.” It sounded like the very last thing I wanted to do. But I was curious that he was giving me a free get-out-ofhanging-out-with-dad card. “And if I don’t like it, then what?” “If you come back here still feeling the same, I’ll never bring up college again. And I’ll start looking for places in Brooklyn, too.” I raised my eyebrows. “No BS. But you gotta really do it. It’s not about where we are, it’s about learning how to be open to the circumstances. Or giving the circumstances a chance to grow into something you know and love.” He spoke these words in a tone more serious than his usual playful one. “All you’ve gotten to know since we’ve been here is that bedroom.” 33

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Yeah, and I still don’t love that, either. Again, true but unnecessary, so I stayed silent. Despite not loving my room or anything about this house, I still wanted to stay in it instead of walking around all day. But the deal was too sweet to pass up, and I could tell he wasn’t bluffing. “Fine,” I put out my hand for him to shake. “I’ll do your little experiment. But we both already know what’s going to happen.” I started getting ready to go upstairs. “Give the future a chance, Jay,” he called to me. “Give it a chance to happen before you start predicting it.” I didn’t answer this. But I did pause on the steps, ruminating over what he said earlier. “Dad?” “What’s up?” “Do you regret it?” He stopped tidying the table and looked up. “What?” “Waiting,” I said. “You said you knew you wanted to leave a year before the divorce. Do you regret wasting a year to end up at the same conclusion that you already knew?” I didn’t know if it would be an uncomfortable question, but I knew he’d answer it anyway. He placed a hand on his hip and then smiled at me. 34

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“Nah,” he said. “I never regret the scenic route.”

It was early summer but outside felt like a mid-August day. I’d thrown two bottles of water in a tote bag along with some other miscellaneous items and came outside with no real intentions. The assignment was a passive one; I just had to let life happen to me for a few hours and come back home. I started by turning left instead of right. Almost every other time I left our house I’d turn right towards the train, but my father would probably say there’s a whole world to the left waiting to be explored. And if I was going to get what I wanted most—to go back to Brooklyn and for him to shut up about college forever—the least I could do was give the experiment a full effort. The left was boring at first. Lively, in the way the area usually was, but unengaging. It was different hearing the sounds of the city when you were among them; from indoors, each voice or horn or siren was an individual instrument played abruptly and out-of-tune. Out here, though, everything blended together like an orchestra—so smoothly that it became white noise; almost nothing at all. “Mama, I love your hair.” The voice that cut through the noise came from a man waiting at the bus stop behind me. I turned around, taken aback by the reminder that I was present and perceptible, and flashed a smile. “Thank you.”

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I’d already started turning to walk away when he said, “No, thank you for having it that way!” I looked back to smile again and saw two other ladies at the bus stop smiling at me too. After that, something about the walk changed. It felt different now—of course, now I was stealing glances at my hair in store windows and had swiped some lip gloss on to confirm that I at least looked presentable to the world I was attempting to explore. But I decided to take another left to follow the pattern I’d started, and this left was different from the first. Not boring, but quieter. So quiet that I was curious what the source of the silence was and why there wasn’t any of it on our block. I’d stumbled onto a block with brick row houses running from end to end: on the right the houses were all yellow with white limestone trim, and on the left they were red with brown or green trim. All the houses were back-to-back, stuck together like one big, long mansion on either side. In between the yellow and red, a sense of calm sat in the middle that lulled everything to a stillness. The leaves on the trees didn’t move, no cars came down the block, even I had unknowingly stopped in front of one of the yellow houses to stare. They all had to have been built long before this era, back when there was still architectural detail from the designs around the trim to the floral pattern of the front stoop railings. As if someone had heard my thoughts, a voice cut through the silence this time from behind me. Once I heard it, as if it popped the bubble the calm had encased me in, I slowly became aware of other sounds. There were voices coming from the house that I stood watching in a reverie, 36

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another person’s loafers were clicking down the block and headed toward the house, and that person paused to nod at the person behind me before going inside. I don’t know why I expected to see someone older; possibly because an older man had complimented me earlier and something about this block made me feel like everything within it held an ancient mystery. But he couldn’t have been more than two or three years older than me; he certainly wasn’t all that much taller. Still, I didn’t hear whatever the question he’d asked was, but I knew the inquiry was delivered with confidence. I could see it in his stance, the tilt of his head while he looked at me like he was watching a movie and trying to recall the actress’ name, the half-step closer he took to me to repeat the question. “Are you here for the exhibit?” “Oh, uh, no. I didn’t know there was an exhibit.” “Oh. So then what brings you by, uh…” he gestured toward me with an inquiring eye. “Jayna.” He smirked. “So like, Jane but black?” I frowned and fought against a laugh. “That one’s a first, I guess.” This made him laugh; or maybe he was laughing at himself. “Okay, Jayna, what brings you by?” “Um…” I looked around me at the houses, glued together in unity like they were standing for a shared cause. 37

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Immovably committed to a purpose; still, yet moving together. These houses had a presence, an aim, a goal. What did I have? “Nothing really,” I told him. “I was just taking a walk.” “Well, this definitely isn’t the worst place to accidentally stumble upon.” His eyes scanned around us and I followed his gaze. At the end of the block, near the last house there was a gated alleyway with a sign on the brick that read Private Road: Walk Your Horses. “Yeah, what is this place?” “This is Striver’s Row,” he announced with a smile. “That is my grandpa’s old house. The exhibition is called Soul of the Row—it features a bunch of his never-released paintings.” I nodded. “And you?” “Oh, I’m Divine.” He gave me a warm, firm hand to shake. “So like the word, but a name?” Divine nodded with a close-lipped smile as if he was impressed. “Jayna got jokes.” I shrugged and chuckled with him. “You can call me Vine, though. I prefer it.” 38

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“Well it’s nice meeting you Vine.” Behind us, two women were walking out of the house. One of them stopped to give Vine a warm smile and a thank you, and after them a man walking in paused near the house and then proceeded once Vine nodded to confirm he was indeed at the right place. “I gotta get back inside. I’m working the exhibit today so, you know—answering questions, walk-through tours, the works,” he said to me. “Would you like one?” “What, a tour?” He nodded. I hesitated, looking inside at the people perusing the art who were clearly the types tasteful enough to have even heard about something like this in the first place. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a museum. “Say yes before that lady asks me,” Vine said, gesturing with his eyes toward an older woman up the block that was headed for the house. “I’d rather give you the tour than her.” I laughed. “Yes.”

Inside was a townhouse transformed into a gallery. Because all the houses’ exteriors were identical, I wasn't expecting inside to have so much character and detail and space. There was a chandelier at the foyer, four brown rosewood pillars leading into the main room downstairs, and a fireplace in that room with a large portrait of Vine’s grandfather above it. It sat next to a poster with the title of the exhibit, his name (Max Wailer), and a blurb describing 39

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the work. As Vine led me toward the spiral staircase and up the stairs, he was giving me the information that was on the sign and more. “So my grandpa was born and raised in the Bahamas. His father worked as a handyman but had the skills of an architect. He got a job opportunity helping with the development of Striver’s Row when they first started, so they moved up to Harlem. My grandpa’s mother would watch him and the developers’ kids during the day while the men worked, and she eventually became really close with the family that hired her and her husband. So they all remained friends even after the houses were built, and by the time my grandpa was older and well-known for his paintings, the owners of this house were old and on their way out. In their will, they left the house to my grandpa since they knew him since he was a kid fresh to this country, and they knew he’d make good use of the space for his art.” Vine explained all of this with the smooth brevity of a trained tour guide, but with sincerity in each detail. “Wait, question. What is Striver’s Row?” He paused in front of me when we were halfway up the steps. “You’re not from around here, are you?” “No,” I shook my head. “I’m from Brooklyn. My dad and I just moved to this area.” “And let me guess: you didn’t get past 110th Street that much before, huh?” Vine chuckled at this, knowing he didn’t have to wait for my response. “A lot of people don’t know what it is, even in Harlem. But this is a historical district that was first designed in the late 19th century. This developer had the idea to create a perfect, secluded 40

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neighborhood for white people with money to isolate themselves from the world.” “That’s what your great grandfather was helping to build?” Vine nodded as we reached the top of the stairs. “See, when Harlem started getting too black for the whites, they left and the houses weren’t selling. They were empty for a while, until the developer finally gave in and started selling them to black people.” “But your grandpa got this house for free.” Vine waved to someone passing by and placed his hand on my shoulder gently, barely, to lead me through the space. There were maybe ten people moving around, gazing at the paintings and pausing to a slower stroll when they were near Vine to listen in on what he was telling me. “Yeah,” he continued once we settled near the back wall. “The only black people at the time who could afford to buy on these blocks were the uppity ones, so this became a district of black politicians, musicians, artists, professionals. And Max Wailer.” He pointed at the painting across from us: the scene looked like this house, on this block, with a skinny young man in green pants sitting on the front stoop while people walked on the sidewalk in front of him. The title card next to it read self-portrait. “He was from a different country. Then he started living here, on a block he’d seen develop since he was a kid, and now felt unfamiliar in the community. Everybody on 41

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Striver’s Row was somebody, and my grandpa was…still striving.” A few people had gathered around me now, listening to his story. “So he wanted to build a presence— not only a name for his art, but he wanted to contribute something to the Row. He turned this house into a gallery space where he would showcase his work and invite the neighbors for drinks and refreshments. Then that turned into people coming by to have their portrait painted by him. Then families started coming by, and before you knew it almost every black person of some importance in New York City had sat for a portrait from him. So my grandfather became important too.” As Vine explained this, I looked over the paintings on the walls with new curiosity. They were beautiful from what I could see before, but now they felt alive. Emotional. Tangible. I saw the faces of mothers and fathers, congressmen, saxophonists, surgeons. Every one of them portrayed with a gaze that seemed to follow you around the room; like they were painted not to be frozen in time, but to feel and appear immortal. “When my grandpa died, he left his family this home and requested that we continue to use it how he did—to offer something to the Row,” Vine spoke to the room now, as most people had now gathered around us in the space. “So The Wailer House has been a center for black arts and community programming for the past fifteen years. This exhibit focuses on the portraits you may know and love by my grandpa, and some of his rarer work that I personally love. I think some of these pieces really prove why he was affectionately known as the Soul of the Row. Thank you for coming to support and please, continue enjoying the art.” 42

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Vine was met with claps and thanks, and people scattered around the space with their newfound context and inspiration. He followed behind me as I walked from one painting to the next, studying the ones that weren’t portraits. Like the self-portrait they were all scenic, involving several characters and different points of action, and the scene was always the Striver’s Row houses. The paintings depicted familiar slices of African-American life in the 20th century, set to the backdrop of yellow, red, or brown row houses. The houses in the paintings stood united as they do today, a solid foundation for the strivers’ worlds to unfold. “So you like these pieces more than the portraits?” I turned around to ask Vine. “I don’t know if I like them more,” he took a step closer to the one I was looking at, two girls eating melting ice cream cones on the stoop of one of the houses. “I like the portraits too, but I think they reveal how he saw people. And pieces like this show how he saw the world, and everything in it. Including himself.” He nodded toward the self-portrait before continuing: “And like I said, the portraits were kind of a means to an end. They were beautiful and he enjoyed doing them, mostly for what they did for other people, and they gave him status in this community. But the other pieces had no function to serve. He created them because he simply wanted to, so much that he never even bothered to officially release them.” Vine spoke of his grandfather like he was speaking of himself, with a certainty about his thoughts and intentions 43

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as though he was the one who lived them. Or he’d studied them enough to feel they were his own. “You said this has been The Wailer House since your grandpa died, for the last fifteen years. So you’ve been working here ever since?” “Yup. Since I was nine,” he let out a light laugh. “It wasn’t real work. My whole family is involved with managing it, and the adults handle all the programming stuff while the young people got to do things like reception, walk-throughs, cooking, tidying up, handing out flyers. They’d just give us busy-work in between what we were really there to do, which is study art and become little experts of black art history.” “Ah, so you’re an expert.” Vine scoffed. “I wouldn’t claim that, no. My family just made sure that we grew up with an awareness and understanding of art, enough to have a creative perspective that we could use to offer something to the world. Like my grandfather did. The coming of age, if you wanna call it that, in my family is when you’re given the chance to curate an exhibition at the House. That’s when you graduate to actually working.” I looked around the paintings in the space and back at Vine. “Wait—so you curated this?” “Yeah, this is my first one.” I laughed at how humbly he said it, at how poorly he hid his true enthusiasm. “Congratulations, curator. This is so 44

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amazing. I can’t believe your family has such a rich connection to the arts.” “What about you? Tell me about your family.” “Talking about mine would be a lot less interesting.” Vine stood beside me and leaned his shoulder against the wall, locking us into the space and the conversation. “Humor me.” I sighed. “My parents met while they were in college in Chicago and had me in New York when they moved back here after graduation. They got divorced last year. My mom went to England to live with her new boo. My dad sold his place in Bed-Stuy in March. And now we’re here.” “That is definitely interesting,” Vine said. “Have you been enjoying Harlem so far?” I paused on the question, thinking about what my father said. It was the first time he, or the mission he sent me on, even crossed my mind since getting here. “It’s…okay,” I said. Vine gave me a probing look. “I guess I’m still finding my rhythm out here. What do you like to do for fun, besides curate?” “Eat.” He answered without hesitation, and was surprised when I started laughing. “I’m for real!” “Everyone has to eat. Food can be delicious but, like, eating isn’t an activity you do for fun.”

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Vine grinned at me like I’d just given him a challenge. “It is in Harlem.”

I’d only been out to eat in Harlem twice—both times with my father. The outings were his idea and the restaurants were selected by him, so they were of course the kinds of low-lit, obscure spots with niche cuisine and tiny portions that he used to frequent in Brooklyn. I had a feeling that Vine had different tastes from my father, though. (And that was interesting to me since, on our walk from the Row while he talked about his grandfather’s life with a charming admiration, I couldn’t help but think of how much he reminded me of my father’s favorite musician; somehow, that connection made him feel easier to talk to than he already was.) My suspicions were confirmed when Vine stopped in front of a place I would’ve thought was a party venue if I didn’t know any better. A big green-and-white The Swing sign out front had me looking for swings, until I focused on the music glaring from the outdoor speakers and recognized the genre. “They have performances here every Saturday,” Vine leaned down and spoke these words into my ear and I still barely heard him. It was loud, but I was really lost in gazing at the band of women performing. There were three of them, all wearing red lipstick and poplin dresses, singing and dancing to their song with enough flair for Broadway. The tables and chairs in the outdoor seating area where they were performing were all pushed up toward the front, forming a mini-crowd in front of the women. The middle one flashed a bright smile in my direction, probably as part 46

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of her performance, but I chose to think she was looking at me and smiled back. A woman tapped my shoulder and I turned around to see the hostess holding up two fingers to Vine and I. He nodded and gestured inside, so she led us through the doors to a table right against the window. We were mere feet away from the action; the glass separating us from the performance dulled the noise enough for us to use our inside voices. Vine exhaled. “I hope this wasn’t too long of a walk from the gallery.” “No, I’m not lazy,” I laughed. “I hope I’m not taking you away from working the exhibit.” He shook his head and waved the idea away with his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not the only one working there today. And I would’ve come here even if I didn’t see you today anyway.” I nodded, and he quickly added with a grin: “No offense.” “None taken.” I was looking out the window at the women who were performing another song, jumping into and away from the microphone in unison on pace with the rhythm. “This place seems like a good time.” I expected to hear Vine’s mellow voice, but when the sound didn’t come I turned from the window to find him holding a camera over his eye, aimed at me. He released the shutter as soon as I faced him. “Woah.” 47

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“I’m sorry.” “It’s fine. I just wasn’t, uh…ready for that.” “No, I’m not sorry for taking your photo,” Vine said. I raised an eyebrow at this stranger and his matter-offactness. “I think candids are the ones most worth taking. I’m sorry because I wasn’t entirely honest before.” “When?” “When you asked what I do for fun.” Vine stood up from the table now and I watched him wondering if I was supposed to stand too. He hung the camera strap over his neck, where I got a better study of it—an analog man, unsurprisingly—and tugged on it with a smile. “I don’t just come here to eat.” Before I could question him about what he meant or why he took my photo, a waitress making her way to our table interrupted with menus and water. As she placed everything down, Vine said something to her that I couldn’t hear. She nodded, and then just as suddenly as she’d appeared he floated away, leaving me with nothing more than a squeeze on the shoulder before making his way outside. I watched him enter the crowd with his camera in hand, sliding carefully around the garden like he was tracking prey. He stopped in the middle, angled his camera over the shoulder of the person in front of him, assumed the position, and clicked. He did this a few more times. He didn’t shoot like a predator; the singers leaned into him when his lens was on them, giving him eye contact or turning up the expressiveness of their performance. He moved around the 48

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garden with effortless precision, fitting himself into spaces in the crowd that seemed to be waiting for him, finding the perfect point-of-view to compose the moment like a renaissance painting. “Feeling ready, sugar? I can give you some more time if you need it.” I hadn’t realized the waitress was standing there. I picked up a menu and started trying to scan over the options. “Oh, uh…I don’t know. I guess I should wait for my friend.” She gave a warm smile that reminded me of my mother. “Divine don’t need you waiting on him. He’ll be out there ‘til they’re done.” “Does he come here often?” The waitress nodded. “Ever since his mama used to bring him when he was little. That was every now and then, when the family would come by. But he comes on his own every weekend, sometimes Friday and Saturday.” “Are there performers on Fridays too?” “Yeah, that’s open mic night, so anyone can come in and perform. If people are really in the know, half the reason they even want to perform here is for a chance to be in one of Vine’s pictures.” “So he’s kind of a big deal, then?” She nodded immediately, like it was an easy question. “The Wailers have a deep history with the culture around here. Knowing that family, these people think being in one 49

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of his pictures means they might end up in the Smithsonian one day.” She looked out the window at him and I followed her gaze, thinking about the fact that I was now in one of his pictures too. I was helpless against the permanence of that fact and I didn’t even know what it meant. “Do you perform?” I looked back at her. “What, like, sing?” “Yeah, you seem like the type. You got the pretty face for it.” I blushed, and she continued: “You should sign up for open mic next Friday.” To make the suggestion before receiving any confirmation that I actually did sing, or had any interest in doing any kind of performance, was presumptuous. But the way she said it made it sound more like a recommendation than a suggestion—based in fact, much like the way a doctor would recommend I exercise once a day. Or the way my mother would recommend that I sing at our holiday party every year because the guests “looked forward” to hearing my voice, and more importantly because it was the only thing at the parties (besides the cocktails) that would put a real smile on my father’s face. “Jayna.” I turned around to see Vine standing near the entrance. I hadn’t noticed him come back in. “What’s up?” “They’re about to do their last song.” 50

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I could tell by his face that this was an invitation, and it was not one I was going to refuse. I thanked the waitress, who placed our menus on our chairs to reserve the table, and went to follow Vine back to the garden. I didn’t know what we were doing here together or why, and it was difficult to form a real opinion on Vine or discern his opinion on me, but I knew there was something about the way he seemed to move through the world that made me want to move a little bit like that too. On our way to the garden, I stopped at a clipboard on the hostess’ desk. There was one last available slot on the signup sheet for next week’s open mic; I wrote my name in it so quickly that Vine didn’t even notice.

By the time Vine was walking me home, the sun had just started to set. We chatted through our stroll under the sky’s pink glow, the sound of jazz still ringing in our ears. I felt like a kid coming home after the streetlights came on, the way the day seemed to have passed by me in a sudden hurry. “So how long have you been doing photography?” He drew in a breath at the question and looked up in the air for the answer. “Maybe…I don’t know, since I was around ten?” He paused after this, still thinking, and then: “I’ve been interested in it since the first time I saw my grandpa’s paintings.” “His paintings made you interested in photography?”

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“Of course they did. I mean, you saw the portraits. He was doing them at a time when there was access to cameras, yet he chose to paint instead. Same with the more scenic paintings—he could’ve just taken photos of the Row if he wanted to. But they called him the Soul of the Row for a reason, you know? He really was just trying to capture the soul of Harlem. The soul that spoke to him in what he saw around him every day. The paintings were his way of speaking back.” Vine opened his arms out when he said the soul of Harlem, as if trying to hold the vastness of the summer evening streets around us. “I know a photo could never be a painting, but that’s kind of why I do it. As an experiment to see if I can create something in this medium with as much soul as my granddad had in his.” Vine talked about his grandfather as if he were still alive, even while using past tense. I’d been thinking all day about how significant a person who no longer existed on earth was to his identity, how someone who existed in the past had so much impact on his present and his future. I often felt like I was floating aimlessly through space, prematurely severed from an invisible cord. But Vine had an ancestor to be his anchor, firmly grounding him in place. “What about you? What speaks to your soul?” It was as if he knew I was already pondering it in my mind, the differences between us; our disparate answers to that question probably chief among them. “I don’t know.”

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Vine frowned like he didn’t believe me. We made a turn and were now on my block, and I noticed myself slowing my pace. “Well, what do you like to do for fun?” “A lot of things,” I said, not remembering what any of them were or the last time I did them. “I think I’m one of those people who can enjoy anything as long as it’s enjoyable. Does that make sense?” Vine was following my pace now. “Yeah. You probably go through hobbies like phases.” “Something like that.” We let the pause settle for a moment while we stepped one foot after another down the block, careful not to rush the time that we could feel running out. I was stirring thoughts more than savoring the moment. I continued, “I enjoy a variety of things. But I don’t know what speaks to my soul, really.” “Have you listened?” Vine held a stare with me after he asked the question, like he knew it would confuse me and he wanted me to find clarity in his eyes. I did understand, but I wasn’t ready to answer. I didn’t know how. We came up to the middle of the block now and there on the front stoop of our building was my father, reading a book with an ice cup in hand. I quietly thanked him for having his attention elsewhere; the last thing I needed was for him to notice Vine and invite him in to have a glass of wine and explore his Harlem Renaissance art collection. “This is me,” I nodded toward the house. 53

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He nodded. “Well, it was a delightful surprise encountering you today, Jane but black.” I rolled my eyes. “Thank you for showing me…everything that you did. I feel like I saw a lot today.” Vine stood still for a moment, and then pulled me in for a hug. A gentle, one-armed, so-light-you-barely-noticed-it hug. “Focus on what you hear, too. Listen for what speaks and you’ll find it.” He gave me the stare again, as if holding space for the thoughts that must be floating through my mind, and then started away. “You know where to find me.” I did. And I watched him walk back in that direction, the same way I’d gone this morning without much of a second thought to where it would take me. “Vine?” He turned at the sound of my voice, standing a few feet from me, and nodded to me. “Why’d you take my photo earlier?” Vine smiled like he’d been waiting for me to ask, and then started turning around like he wasn’t going to answer. Before he fully walked away, he called to me: “I heard something.” And then he walked away, into the sunset and toward Striver’s Row. 54

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I turned around and my father’s eyes were peeking at me over his book. “Did you miss me?” I opened the gate and started climbing the steps, flashing him a cheeky smile. “Who’s that?” “Don’t start.” “I’ve never seen him before.” “I’m going upstairs, Dad.” “So your friend can walk you to your old man’s house, but your old man can’t know who he is?” I paused at the top of the steps, where he was seated, and sighed. The corner of his mouth curled the way it did when he felt his facetious attempts to annoy me were successful. “Actually, you can,” I said. “Come to The Swing next Friday night.” His face took on a surprised expression. “Well, alright then.” I walked past him, up the last step and went to open the door. Just as I was about to head inside, he added: “So today worked, then? You starting to like Harlem?” I turned around to look not at him but at the last few pink clouds left, thinking about how the sky remains the sky no matter where home is. “I guess it’s starting to like me.”

Aishamanne Williams

Diary of a Seed

hiding in plain sight i would rather be the sky than know how to fly belonging to everything and nothing you could plant your feet deep into the earth crack every kink in your spine reach your arms up high enough to touch God’s sneakers and you still wouldn’t see her she walks heavy steps you can feel but not hear she wishes you’d pretend she’s not there what you’re seeing in her eyes is not fear see, there’s a machete inside her mouth so she keeps it closed fires burned inside her heart so she keeps it cold evidence of crucifixion on her soles so she walks heavy. my name sounds different on every single tongue they ask what i go by and i say unnoticed here they can’t see the mask one time i went somewhere they could i asked them my name and they said unholy i never went back. would rather be the whole sky than fly my tears would ruin everyone’s day fuck up the prospect park picnics and sidewalk brunches while you shed yours on the train and beg the rain to go away and come again another day so i’d feign happy and keep the sun golden 57

Aishamanne Williams

here they can’t see the mask i swallowed the knife, covered my feet, changed my name from unholy here they don’t even ask.

Diary of a Seed

Sacrifices Things were always flying about Rickie’s head when she was a baby. Her mother complained on the day of her birth that too many flies were present in that patch of the woods they’d chosen, where she squatted over the bed of banana leaves upon which Rickie was meant to make her earthside debut. The midwife had told her to focus on her breathing, for disrupting the energetic alignment they’d so carefully worked toward over the past nine months would do more harm than the flies could. Rickie’s mother insisted that Rickie’s aunt had not followed her instructions for how to age the leaves and sent her to the house to retrieve more. By the time she returned, Rickie was born. The next day, a butterfly found its way from the garden, through the second floor window and onto Rickie’s forehead in her crib. Butterflies were long out of season by then, a fact all witnesses from that day agree on. What was harder to settle was Rickie’s mother’s memory that every window in the house was closed that day. A few days after that Rickie was stung on the forehead by a bee, and it was at this point that her mother declared too many flying things drawn to a child in her first days as a bad omen. So Rickie was used to feeling like a curse. In a way, she found satisfaction from the thing within her that unsettled people, whatever it was. From the day she was born she unsettled her mother; posing a threat just by existing, with 59

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her strange omens and a stubborn refusal to ever be afraid. As she grew older, Rickie became unsettling to other people for reasons often beyond their own understanding. She just had something about her, that girl, with a sugarcane tongue and eyes full of stars. Her mother would say that her mind had a mind of its own. And the flying things never went away. Even now, as Rickie sat on the cold bathroom floor with her legs folded underneath her, there was a moth circling her head like she’d swallowed a lightbulb. She was unbothered by the thing, as most things. But something about the items laid out before her on the bathroom floor was getting under her skin, making her itch with the tingle of incompleteness. Something was missing. “A stainless basin. Fresh cow’s milk. Aged rose petals,” Rickie softly narrated the list of items before her, which she’d memorized even before going to collect them all. “Cinnamon, clove oil, frankincense and myrrh, a silk ribbon, the peel of an orange…” She had reached the end of the items in front of her, but the list wasn’t finished. “Frankincense and myrrh, a silk ribbon, the peel of an orange…” She repeated this a few times, waiting for a divine voice to complete the sentence and remind her what was missing. She’d been gathering materials for this for weeks and thinking about it for even longer, so the idea that any detail could have been overlooked or forgotten just didn’t make sense to her. Rickie repeated the list to herself over and over, scanned endlessly through the items, and still nothing. She didn’t know what 60

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upset her more: forgetting to get the thing, or forgetting whatever it was supposed to be. Today, there was little room for her imperfections, especially carelessness—usually, she knew how to be gentle with herself when need be, but all she wanted in this moment that she’d spent weeks preparing for was to prove to herself that she could actualize her potential. That’s it. She just wanted to experience in real time the capabilities she knew she’d always had, ones she’d seen before. And here she was, at eleven PM sitting on the bathroom floor with a moth and self-pity, failing herself. Rickie shoved the basin away from her and it tumbled across the bathroom tile with a loud clanging sound. It startled even the moth, which landed on the wall behind her to regain composure. Rickie sat arms folded staring at her reflection in the mirror across from her, with eyes growing warm with rage like a pot of her mother’s healing stew. Her hair was pulled back into a low bun, showing off her moonshaped face and now the classic pout that appeared whenever she couldn’t make her way happen with the ease that she could make a leaf turn purple or an animal levitate. Rickie wasn’t spoiled until it came to her gifts; they needed to work immediately, or else she was ruined. What was the point of knowing how to manipulate reality if it didn’t work when she wanted to fix her own? The bathroom door swung open. Rickie didn’t bother to turn; she knew she’d left it locked, so there was only one person in the house with the gift to bypass that and the audacity to use it. “You’re missing the stone.” Her mother stood in the bathroom doorway wearing a plush pink robe, her hair tied 61

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in a silk cloth she made herself—looking as ordinary as anyone’s mother, but towering over Rickie and her playthings with the tense scrutiny of a monarch. “What?” Rickie kept her eyes in the basin, wiping it with a cloth to prepare the ritual. “Cinnamon, clove oil, frankincense and myrrh, a silk ribbon, the peel of an orange, and a stone from the land of your mother’s birth.” Rickie looked up now. Her mother unfolded her arms, turned halfway out the door, and said before leaving: “Clean this up and go to bed, Rickie.” She walked away letting her words hang in the air, knowing Rickie would let them fall flat. Rickie pushed out of the bathroom with enough force to knock a white burning candle off a table in the hallway; the candle froze just hairs’ length from the floor, the flame still dancing in the dark. She used a sharp gaze to glide it back onto the tabletop. “You see why you don’t slam doors in this house?” Her mother asked, standing at the counter over small piles of dark herbs. She took an olive green bottle with a golden seal from the cabinet and poured its clear contents into a kettle over the stove. “When are you going to start treating me like an adult?” Rickie’s mother sighed over the boiling water. “What you’re doing has nothing to do with adulthood, Rickie. It has nothing to do with people or time or anything of this 62

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world. It’s childish of you, actually, to think this is about you being a child.” “And yet I’m not a child. I’ve been doing this since I started walking. You and Grandma were the ones who taught me what I know, and after all these years you would think—” “Rickie!” Her mother’s voice cut through the night air like a diamond blade through stone. Silence entered as a welcomed presence, binding each of them to their respective ends of the room and glazing over their eyes with the gloss of bitter longing. “Mom,” Rickie pushed the sound into the room like a call for someone she knew wasn’t there; a spirit who couldn’t answer. “I need the stone to complete the ritual.” Her mother smiled. “I know that.” “So you’ll give it to me?” The water began bubbling in the kettle on the stove. Rickie’s mother paid it no mind, just held her daughter’s gaze with an expression that answered the question quicker than words could. Rickie’s eyes were sharp daggers on the kettle, and after a few seconds of her stare the bubbling calmed and the fire went down. “Those are the kinds of spells you should be doing,” her mother said. “You don’t need the stone because you don’t need that ritual. It was created for people who really do.” 63

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Rickie pushed out a sigh and her body turned toward the hallway. She almost wanted to give up and quit, which was how she felt during every conversation with her mother. It always felt like pleading with a brick wall; she never walked away feeling heard, just rejected and somehow outnumbered by one person. She closed her eyes, trying to find calm in the darkness. “Who are you to tell me what I need and don’t? The ritual is for people searching for spiritual guidance, and if I want that I shouldn’t need permission.” “I am your mother.” She spoke these words with so much heat that Rickie thought the stove might turn on again. Then, a bit softer now after noticing her daughter’s expression and glancing out the window to contemplate something before continuing: “I’m here to guide you, Rickie. I want you to lean on that. I want you to trust me enough to share your needs and let me help you figure out how to meet them. This ritual, honey, it isn’t the way. It’s a seeing spell that grants sight that defies time and space. It could be the past, present, or future; your life or anyone else’s; this dimension or others. You have no control over what you’ll see.” “Mom, I have no control over what I can see now every day with my own two eyes. Does that mean I should keep them closed in fear?” Rickie held eye contact with her mother—she wanted to watch the question sit on her chest, and it did. Her mother swallowed, turned around in silence, and began preparing a cup of tea. She scooped up a concoction of the herbs on the counter into the cup and poured the kettle’s contents out 64

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over it. She then left the cup on the counter and walked out of the kitchen, disappearing down the hallway. Their conversations, especially those about the spiritual arts, were often tense and usually ended in someone walking away. But it was rarely this abrupt, so Rickie stood in the kitchen looking around for a moment in disbelief in how she’d been left hanging. Then footsteps started coming down the hallway again. Rickie’s mother came out of the darkness with her hair untied and out of the silk scarf, which was in her left hand. Her right was closed, and when she got close enough to Rickie, she opened it to reveal a smooth black stone. Rickie gasped. With bright eyes and an emerging grin that she didn’t bother to hold back, she opened her mouth to say something but her mother held a finger up to her own lips, demanding silence. “You are my daughter, and I know because you have my stubbornness,” Her mother chuckled lightly, but maintained a sober countenance. “You came into this world gifted, Rickie, and you’ve been learning how to increase those gifts ever since. But I have lived longer than you. So when I tell you that this life can be dangerous, you have to listen to me. The things you see, whether with the pair of eyes on your face or inside your mind, can hurt you. The sights this life shows us can be like knives, sharp enough to cut you. They leave scars inside your mind, where no one else can see, where they will never heal. You are right that I can’t protect you from everything forever, and I want you to have experiences, but I have the wisdom to know which ones you don’t need. But you are in control, not me. So here is the stone if you would still so desperately like to see.” 65

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She placed the stone in Rickie’s hand. It was just a rock now, ordinary despite being the key to unlock the most powerful ritual she had ever attempted, but it felt like it tingled inside her palm. Rickie ran her fingers over the stone wondering what it had seen, what kinds of elements had weathered it to the smoothness she saw now. She wondered what her mother had weathered; she’d always seen her as a strong woman, immune to defeat. She and Rickie shared life together since she was born, but for the first time Rickie wondered about the life her mother lived before her. What had scarred her? The thought that anything could cut through her mother’s iron walls scared her, but this fear made her want to do the ritual even more. Whatever her mother had seen, even if dangerous, clearly wasn’t enough to knock her off her feet. The stories of scars couldn't discourage Rickie because they were stories she was still here to tell. “Thank you, mama.” She gave the stone a squeeze in her hand. “Take this, too,” Her mother took the cup of tea from the table and carefully put it in Rickie’s other hand. “It will make you forget. If the ritual works and you come back not liking what you saw, drink this and you won’t remember any of it.” Rickie took the cup of tea. They shared a stare that held them together as one in a moment where they felt more separate than ever. Then Rickie scurried back into the bathroom without a word.

Diary of a Seed

She set the tea down on the side of the sink, away from everything else. Drinking it would be like undoing everything she was about to prepare so carefully, so she knew she wouldn’t need it. She sat down on the bathroom floor and began, her hands moving with the ease of an alchemist. Rickie had memorized the Seeing ritual since she first decided she wanted to do it. The ritual was a chance to learn more about herself; whether she ended up seeing her past lives, a glimpse of her future or a sign for what to do in her present, she knew whatever the spirits showed her would be what they felt she needed to see. She’d felt stuck under the weight of everything she didn’t know. So, fearlessly, she glided through the steps: Pour the cow’s milk into the basin; fill up to one inch from the brim. Steep the orange peel in the milk; leave it untouched for three minutes before continuing. Spell your first name in your mind while pouring in drops of clove oil and stop when you’re finished. Add one stick of cinnamon for every full decade you’ve been alive. Throw in the aged rose petals on top of everything else; as many as your heart is called to, but not so much to cover the contents of the basin. Burn the frankincense and myrrh in your space. Tie the silk ribbon around your left wrist. When she was finished, the basin with her concoction looked full and alive. She looked down at the stone in her sweating palm; she wasn’t nervous, but there was a kaleidoscope of butterflies flying through her stomach and 67

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she couldn’t figure out why. As if it could sense this, the moth from before flew off the bathroom wall and onto Rickie’s shoulder. She smiled, accepting this as confirmation that she was ready for the last step, and closed her eyes. With a stone from the land of your mother’s birth firmly planted in both hands, place your closed hands into the basin all the way to its bottom. She opened her eyes and was in a living room. Something about the room felt familiar, with its beige sofa unit, pale orange carpet, and gaudy chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The furniture was old-fashioned and too plentiful. A TV was playing a news channel, but the volume was low so Rickie couldn’t hear what they were saying. She was sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, across from the sofa. She was about to stand up and leave—there was a beaded curtain in the doorway and she wanted to see what was beyond. Maybe something in the hallway or another room could help her make sense of where she was. But just as Rickie stood up, she heard someone coming and quickly fell back down into her seat. The beads started jingling and Rickie felt her face break into a smile that stretched for miles. It was her grandmother who came through the doorway; since she got sick Rickie rarely got to see her, unless to visit her house every now and then to help care for the plants and cats and borrow herbs. Every time she went, her grandmother pulled her into the world’s warmest embrace, made her a meal the angels would envy, and gave her new spells to learn. 68

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But this time, her grandma didn’t return the grin on her face. In fact, she didn’t react as if she’d seen Rickie smile at all. She just walked over to the sofa and eased slowly down into it with a heavy sigh. “So what are you going to do?” As soon as Rickie heard the question, she knew something was off. This voice wasn’t the one dripping with honey that her grandma always used with her. This woman sitting before her on the sofa looked different; younger than her grandma, but somehow more tired. This room looked like an imitation of her grandma’s living room that someone had created from poor memory. What was this place? This is the question Rickie wanted to ask, but when she opened her mouth sounds emerged that she did not create and could not control. “I don’t know. I mean, I do want to be a mother. Richard has always wanted children. But I don’t know how he’ll react if I tell him now.” “Shay, it’s your decision.” Chills ran down Rickie’s spine when her grandmother used her mother’s name. The eye contact she made with her grandmother felt eerie now that she realized the moment she was in—one from so long ago that her father’s name was being used in the present tense. She felt wrong, somehow, eavesdropping on whatever this conversation between her grandmother and her mother was. Her grandmother continued, “You don’t have to keep this baby. There are ways. Especially with how early things are. If you were further along it might take a more 69

Aishamanne Williams

complicated spell, but I could give you something to drink right now that would take care of everything in ten minutes if that’s what you wanted.” Rickie felt a tightness in her chest. She knew it was her they were talking about, and hearing her grandmother talk about getting rid of her so easily made her want to yell. But still, she couldn’t control her sounds. It was like her lines were already written. “I want this baby. I do. But Richard is already sick. You know I’m trying to help him, but I’m scared of how a baby will complicate things. He won’t be able to help me as much.” Her grandmother shook her head. “You won’t be able to help him, either.” “I can care for my husband and my child. That’s the kind of multitasking we’re born to do, isn’t it?” Again, Grandma shook her head. This time she inched closer and grabbed Rickie’s hand into a firm grasp, pressing her thumb into her skin. Rickie recognized this grasp as the prelude to all her grandmother’s most vital wisdom; she’d use it every time she was about to share something with you, and you’d better believe it was the truth. She held a higher knowing and ignoring it had consequences. “You can’t, Shay. Not like this. I saw it myself. This one you’re carrying is coming in mighty, with force. She will bring to this earth an abundance to be reckoned with; she’s going to need a lot from you. So she’s going to take a lot from you, more than you can give if you’re giving to Richard too,” Grandma explained, keeping her hand locked. 70

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“She will make your power weak. Brittle. If you choose to keep her you’ll survive it, but you won’t be strong enough to use any magic while you’re pregnant. Especially not the kind needed to heal Richard’s ailments.” Rickie was a witness to this moment, but she could feel her mother’s emotions. It was a losing situation with no escape. “But I’ll get my power back once she’s born, right?” The voice coming out of Rickie asked. Grandma sighed and softened her grip to a caress. “Yes. But you know Richard is not doing well. It’s…it’s not good. A pregnancy is long, too long for him to survive with no help. By the time she’s born…” The butterflies in Rickie’s stomach had turned to stone and dropped. This was a moment in which she hadn’t existed, not really, but was a determining factor threatening to shift people’s lives. She never knew that her existence had been such a burdened, debated decision. “There is no shame in taking care of it now, if that’s what you want. That’s your right as a woman. And no one would blame you for loving your husband,” Grandma told her. Rickie exhaled her mother’s breath. “This…this girl that you’re seeing. You said she’s coming with force, with purpose. If I don’t keep her, where does her soul go?” “Back where it came from,” Grandma replied. “And if I get pregnant again later?” 71

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Grandma tightened her lip and gave Shay the loving expression she’d give before delivering disappointment. “She’s coming now because she feels her time is now. If you send her back, there’s no way to guarantee that she’ll return.” Rickie could feel her mother’s mind. She couldn’t hear any of the individual thoughts, but she could feel the tension, the pain, the guilt. “And if I just let you take care of it now,” Shay said, “I’ll keep the strength I need to heal Richard.” Grandma nodded slowly. “You decide, Shay.” The sun must have started shining from the window behind Rickie, because a glow entered her grandmother’s eyes that lifted them to a warm hazel. As she stared into her grandma’s eyes wondering what she saw in the young face of her mother looking back at her, Rickie suddenly broke into a coughing fit. She coughed uncontrollably, grasping at her dry throat with her hands, until she fell over on the floor. Her eyes were closed while she heaved but she tapped around on the floor with her hands, searching for the air she couldn’t find. Then her hands landed in what she thought was a cup of water—salvation. Rickie quickly opened her eyes. When she looked down, her hands were wet with milk. She was back now: to herself, her life, her bathroom. The moth was perched on the shower curtain rod as if it had been awaiting her return. Her chest rose and fell with violent force. 72

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Rickie stumbled up to her feet, picked up the basin and poured its contents out into the tub, her shaky hands spilling some of it on the floor. She went over to the sink to look at herself in the mirror and make sure she was really there. She was. Disheveled, eyes widened like a deer, mouth dry from exasperation, but she was here. And at what cost? She looked down at the cup of tea her mother had given her. Rickie did want to forget. It was ugly, what she had seen, and she wanted to scrub the conversation from her mind to feel clean again. Her life had taken her father’s away—from him, from her mother, and from her, since she never got to meet him. And that fated decision made before she even reached the earth took away any hope of her having a normal relationship with her mother. Shay held a grudge against Rickie from the moment she was born despite how much she tried to deny or repress it, and Rickie had always had intuition beyond her years so she sensed, and thus projected, the resentment. Years of loving a mother who she felt couldn’t bring herself to truly like her, and now she understood why. It made Rickie sick to her stomach, thinking about how the disdain she felt from Shay had actually been a love more divine than she’d ever known. To love something that doesn’t even exist yet so much that you give it the life being drained from the person you loved first. It was unfair to everyone involved. There was no one to blame and yet Rickie still felt it was her. She felt guilty, too, for pitying herself in this situation instead of the one who was burdened with the decision. She felt guilty for reacting to her mother’s ways in times when she just couldn’t see the 73

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burden she’d been carrying, the burden that Rickie still was. She felt remorse for the times she expressed anger to her father’s spirit for not being here, not even sticking around long enough for her to have at least met him once, when really his spirit deserved to be angry at her. She felt so many things that she wanted to feel nothing at all. She looked down again at the tea. The sacrifice was an aching sore that she wanted to assuage from her mind. But it had only been in her mind for the past couple of minutes—she imagined the ache of carrying that awareness for the next twenty-one years. It would be difficult, she thought, to find much joy. Rickie took the tea, still warm in its glass cup, and placed it on the floor where she sat before. She took the basin from the tub and placed it next to it. Then she gathered the materials again and started following the steps the same way she did before. When she reached the end, the part where she was supposed to hold the stone in the basin, she instead poured the tea into the basin. Rickie used the stone to stir the contents of the basin around and around. While stirring, she recited a prayer in a low whisper: “Bring healing to her invisible scars Make a soothing balm for the pain of her memories Lock every battle she’s fought away in a hidden jar Let the gift of oblivion be the white flag of her enemies.” After the third time Rickie repeated the words, Shay opened the bathroom door again. 74

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She looked at Rickie, the basin beside her, the wet stone in her hand, then back at Rickie. “You finished the ritual?” She asked, unable to hide the concern in her trembling voice. Rickie nodded. “Are you okay?” Shay asked. “How did it go?” Rickie shrugged her shoulders. She picked up the empty cup of tea and held it up for her mother to see. “I don’t know.” Shay nodded and allowed her eyes to close for a moment, indulging in a brief sense of relief. There was nothing to say, or she couldn’t find the words, so she stood silently watching her daughter and the little mess she’d made. Rickie looked at her mother and saw not a scrutinizing monarch, but the forbearing face of royalty. She stood from the floor and walked toward her mother, whose brows furrowed as she approached. Rickie paused, not out of hesitation but to say everything with her eyes that she couldn’t with her lips and hoped her mother would hear. They held each other with their eyes, and then Shay pulled Rickie into an embrace that said all the rest.

Aishamanne Williams

Diary of a Seed

camera shy butterflies can’t see their own wings i think if i never caught a glimpse of my own beauty i would either feel more beautiful or beauty would cease to matter it hurts, the adornment of existence but a life without it seems even sadder flying for the delight of another weaving garments in darkness i can’t be saved by what the light brings black holes don’t take energy they just don’t let any escape the strongest spirit is gravity sometimes i call it by another name and it doesn’t answer me i think my cup would be fuller if i wasn’t shining it what you see doesn’t help when you’re standing in a maze when i dream i never see my face i had a dream i reached outer space didn’t even have to leave earth just reached up and touched the heavens like i was infinity feet tall as high up as the tree no one is around to see fall suffering exists on other planets too i can hear the sound what’s a landlord who’s never seen his house a daughter who’s never seen you proud 77

Aishamanne Williams

a victim who never seems to shout what’s a king who’s never seen his crown? a focused man with a kingdom full of closed mouths.

Diary of a Seed

See Level The air, like my heartbeat, is fast-paced and fierce. It whips and howls around me like I’m inside of an invisible, impenetrable bubble. I’m split in two by land and sea—my bottom half in the water, my top half sitting on the sand right where the shore ends. Along the shore, the wind sends grains of sand flying through the air like they’re being sucked up into the sky. I grip my hair tightly in my hands for fear that it’ll send me flying, too. It would be what I deserve if it did. The moon hangs lower and brighter in the sky than I’ve ever seen it, shining a spotlight on my delinquency. No one is around to see; I timed this perfectly, staying up three nights this week to study when everyone falls asleep and when they wake up, even taking note of what time Aria wakes restlessly in the middle of the night to lap around the sleeping girls a few times before returning to her slumber. That usually happens around three hours before sunset; I gave it an hour after her return for safe measure, just to ensure she didn’t stir anyone else from their sleep with her movements. So the coast is clear now, and I have about two hours left before they start waking up. What I want to do should only take me thirty minutes or less. I’m safe, but as I sit here with my butt growing cold and numb from the rocks beneath me and the moonlight illuminating the goosebumps on my arms from the biting air, I’m questioning whether the effort was worth it. It’s just been so long, though, since I felt my own hands running through my hair. We can handle our pampering for ourselves during the winter months, since there are less 79

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people out, especially near the water. We still have to be careful and travel in pairs so someone can keep watch, but most times there’s nothing for miles to watch for so we just end up helping each other rather than stand idle. With tonight’s sharp winds and icy waters it’s hard to tell, but it is summer now—which means it isn’t safe to be out. But I studied and timed it. If I can just endure the cold on my scalp and my skin for long enough, I can be done and back with enough time to even get a nap in before the moon lets the sun reclaim center stage. I have to start now. I scan the shoreline with my eyes, searching for a bucket or a shell large enough to scoop up water with. Anything that could’ve been of use has been blown toward the trees, far out of reach. My eyes land on a plastic bag, of all things, a few feet away from me. I swim over to it, submerge it under the water, and bring it back up to pour over my head. It works in that the water falls on me, but most of it lands right back in the ocean and barely touches enough locks of my hair to make a difference. I push the bag away with a grunt. I have enough time, but I can feel it dwindling. I start swimming forward, down the shoreline scanning with my eyes again. Something in the distance moves, way over by the trees so I can’t make out what it is. It’s large and white. It must be the wind jostling it. I keep my eyes on it to make sure, and the movement stops. I turn to swim forward again and from the corner of my eye I see more movement from the white blob. This time, I freeze in place. The wind is settling now and the thing is still moving, so now I’m aware there’s danger. 80

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This isn’t part of the plan. Nothing is supposed to be here; nothing was when I first came out and checked my surroundings. So what is that? Just as I’m considering giving up and leaving while I still can, the vague movement grows into something that I’m too confused and afraid to miss watching unfold. The white blob is a blanket that someone (as in, an actual person) throws off of them, storming away from it and about to head toward the ocean when another (!) person comes out from under the blanket. The first person is a woman; I can tell because she’s naked, her breasts facing the moon as she runs her hands through her short curls in frustration. The second person is a man, which I identify the same way. I’ve seen naked women before, but I’m taken aback by the bare male frame. I’m not sure what I expected, but for some reason the foreignness of what I’m seeing makes me want to look away. They both look relatively young, maybe around my age if I had one. The man walks over to the girl and pulls her hand into his. She pushes away from him, turning her head to the moon and saying words that he covers with his lips. She tries pushing him away, but her arms slowly turn limp in his hands as she starts moving her lips against his. They engage in whatever this is for a lingering moment; it looks like she’s pulling some kind of energy from his mouth into hers, sucking and biting his lips like they hold a special nectar. He seems to gain something from what he’s giving her, too; he grabs her by her bottom and pulls her in closer. And then it stops again. She’s pushing away, shaking her head. They’re too far away for me to hear what they’re saying, but he seems just as confused by her indecisiveness 81

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as me. He gestures back toward the blanket, tries to pull her toward it but she walks away. He follows, takes her hand again, pulls her in. They’re still too far to hear, but it’s clear that he’s pleading a case and she’s refusing what he’s offering. But she seems unsure, prone to being swayed. He can see this, too, so he caresses her hair and leans in to offer the nectar again. She turns her head away from it, from him, and looks in the opposite direction. In the seconds it takes me to remember that I exist and am more than a mere witness to the scene unfolding before me, she sees me. I see her. We lock eyes together, I draw in a breath, and then together we let out a shriek loud enough to startle the fish. I dive under and swim with them for my life. My heart pounds harder than it did before and the water pushes my hair all around me, covering my eyes and wrapping around my arms, but I push forward anyway. I flail my arms around to find my way and instead find something colliding with me. “Nova?” Aria raises her brows like she’s looking at a strange fish. She studies my appearance, the wildness of my hair and probably bewilderment in my eyes, then looks up toward the surface and back to me. “Nova.” “Aria, you have to help me. I don’t know what to do. I got seen and I came straight here but I don’t know if they’re still up there and—” 82

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“You need to slow down. Breathe,” she orders. I open my mouth wide and pull, feeling the water pass over my gills. My heart begins to beat with less force than before. Noticing this, Aria continues, “What were you even doing up there in the first place?” “Look, you’re not going to understand so I really don’t want to even hear it, but…I was trying to wash my hair.” Aria snickers and tries to stifle it. I turn my back to start swimming away from her. “Okay, Nova! I’m sorry,” she calls me back. “It’s just kind of irresponsible to get caught up over something so silly.” “Don’t you ever get bored?” I want to hold back the question and the aggravation in my voice when I ask it, but it escapes too quickly for me to stop. “We spend every waking moment here.” “We live here, Nova. I like it here.” “I do, too, and I would rather live here than up there. But don’t people visit places other than where they live? I mean, why do I have to be afraid of up there? There’s just sand and trees and humans, and yes, the humans can be dangerous—” Nova raises a finger. “They are dangerous. All of them. They’re the reason why there’s so few of us now.” “Yes, the humans are dangerous. And I’m willing to be careful. But they’ve always been dangerous and they always will be, and I just don’t think that should mean I have to live a life where I only get to feel the sensation of running water 83

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over my dry scalp and my fingers through my own hair once a year if I’m lucky. Living like this isn’t worth it if I’m not living.” I’m almost breathless after pushing the words out of me in rapid succession. And I don’t know where they came from, but I’m grateful for finding them. I’m not sure I even knew for myself why I was really up there until she asked me. She rolls her eyes in classic Aria fashion. “Okay, girl. I hear you. Go live if you want to live. But whoever you saw is probably still up there, and depending on how much of you they saw, we could have a real problem.” I hate that she’s right. I know it was irresponsible and this could be bad, really bad in a way that I certainly know better than to risk, but I still hate that she’s right. “There’s a man up there,” I whisper to her. “Oh,” she scoffs. “Then you should just go back up there and seduce him. That’ll take care of it.” I’ve never spoken to a man before, let alone seen one naked. I know that seducing men is something I’ll have to learn one day (even though the older sisters say it’s an innate skill within each of us), but for now the thought makes my belly turn the way just the sight of his body did. “There’s a girl with him, too.” Aria’s eyes widen. “A girl?”

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I nod. She says nothing and we float in the silence of what we both know this means. Then she takes my hand into hers and interlocks her fingers with mine, and I feel calmed by the warmth between our palms. “We’ll go up together to see if they’re gone. If they’re not, we’ll handle it together. Just follow my lead.” I tighten my grasp. She pulls me up past the sleeping fish and floating weeds; the closer we get to the surface, the slower we swim. Finally, as the top of Aria’s head kisses the surface, she motions with her eyes for me to swim away from her to the other side. I move carefully to not create too many ripples. It’s hard to listen with the water in my ears, but I follow what I think is the sound of their voices. I stop at the opposite end of the shore from Aria. From afar, she looks at me with an approving nod. For some reason, before going up I feel the need to fix my hair. Just in case he’s—they’re—still there. I brush my hands through it, cross my fingers for luck, and then emerge. “I fucking told you!” The girl’s shrill voice almost sends me running back under. She’s pointing at me, screaming these words at the man. He inches toward the shore from where they tentatively stand by the rocks, clothed now, squinting at me. “Hi?” “Hi.”

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The sound of my voice seems to shock them both. I’m not sure what I sound like to them, but I imagine they weren’t expecting me to sound so much like them. So normal. “Come out,” the girl says to me. She’s holding herself with her arms, trembling from the cold. “Come out of the water.” “I’m sorry,” the man says. “My girlfriend is—are you okay? That water is cold. We’re just concerned because we saw you earlier and thought you drowned.” “She did not drown,” she glares at him. “I know what the fuck I saw.” “Sydney, will you chill out?” “No! Stop trying to make me seem crazy, Tyler. You always wanna be so worried about every girl that isn’t me.” She turns to me and takes a step closer to the shore. “You, can you come out of the water please? Your whole body.” I stay put. “Did you hear what I said?” I did, but a lump of nerves is forming in my throat that chokes down any response. “Okay.” She huffs, and then starts toward me. Sand kicks up at her feet as she stomps down the shore, preparing to head into the water. “Sydney, cut it out.” His calls from behind don’t stop her. He calls her from by the trees but she keeps a steady path, 86

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locking eyes with me as she closes in. I feel a sharp tingling near the base of my spine and gulp like I have a mouthful of oil. I know whatever happens next will be more dangerous for her than me, but I can still feel fear rising through my body. “Sydney, get back here!” Tyler follows behind her now. She doesn’t turn. “Sydney!” She’s at the edge of the shore. The tide rolls in and just starts to tickle her feet when we rise. I hop myself up on one of the rocks near me, extending my whole body onto the one across from me. Aria floats to the edge of the shore, still a few feet away in the distance, her whole body visible in the moonlight over a rainbow of seashells. Sydney stands still, stuck in her tracks. Tyler stands behind her with his jaw hanging low enough to inhale sand. “That’s a mermaid!” Tyler still stares back and forth from me to Aria, hushed. “That’s two fucking mermaids!” Sydney yells at him, seemingly in a greater state of vindication at her suspicion being correct rather than shock at what they’re seeing. Aria swims over to me. She places her hand over mine and gives me a questioning look. I nod to confirm that I’m okay. I do feel that way, surprisingly; looking down at my 87

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tail spread out over the rocks, glistening with iridescence under the moonlight, I feel more radiantly beautiful than I ever have. Afraid, yes, of how this interaction will unfold— but beautiful. It’s puzzling to think that I came to the surface more concerned about feeling water on a dry scalp than beholding my glowing lower half. “Hello,” Aria says to them. They each take a step back; Tyler clutches Sydney’s hand from behind. “Wow,” Sydney says breathlessly. She releases Tyler’s hand and leans over, still standing in place, for a better view of us. Her eyes twinkle, reflecting the water as she ogles us. “I always knew you guys were real. Since I was little.” “Sydney, shut up.” “Can I touch your tail?” “No,” Aria says firmly. “You may not touch our tails, or any other part of us. You shouldn’t even be looking at us.” “We won’t tell anyone about this. It’s supposed to be a secret, isn’t it? We’re not gonna blow up your spot. Right?” Sydney looks back to Tyler for confirmation, but he’s still a few inches behind her, staring at us like we’re sharks. I’m starting to see, through him, why they’re easy to seduce. Aria laughs. “I mean, no one would believe you even if you did.” Sydney looks down at my tail, slowly taking in each color and scale. The end of Aria’s sticks out in the water, protruding behind her like a protective guardian. When 88

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Sydney gazes at it, Aria pulls it back down under the surface. “How do you…where is…” Sydney struggles finding the words to complete her questions. “I just have so much I want to know.” “We won’t be telling you any of it.” Aria’s curtness causes Sydney to frown. I can tell she wants not only to know more but to be liked by Aria, by us both. She wants the approval of the mystical creatures whose existence she’s still reeling from having discovered. “Can I at least know your names?” She asks, looking at me now. “We don’t have names,” Aria says. “It’s best you and the person behind you turn away and never come back here again.” She’s glaring at them now. She scoffed at the notion that they could ‘blow up our spot,’ and it’s true—human sightings are mostly harmless in moments like this, where it’s dark, there’s two or less of them, and they have no access to cameras or other weapons. But if they come back here or bring anyone with them, it could lead to bigger problems. It’s how we ended up where we are now, so many thousands of miles from the coast we once called home. “Sydney,” Tyler taps her on the shoulder, suddenly remembering his capacity to move and speak. “Let’s just go.” Sydney groans at him. “Tyler, we are never going to see real mermaids again.” 89

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“As far as we’re concerned, you never have,” Aria warns. “Listen to him.” “Come on, Sydney.” Tyler pulls on her arm. “We don’t know what these things— “What were you doing earlier?” The three of them all turn to me in surprise. I didn’t expect to hear myself speak either, but I suppose I have a lot I want to know too. “What do you mean?” Sydney asks me. “Nova.” Sydney gasps. “Nova!” Aria palms herself on the forehead. “That is such a mermaid name,” Sydney grins at me with an earnest delight, and I wonder how something as simple as what my name is can bring her excitement. “Earlier, when you saw me,” I continue, clearing my throat. “You were doing something. Touching each other. Was he…giving you something?” Tyler giggles. Sydney turns to smack him on the shoulder, and then looks back to me with a peculiar expression. “You…you don’t know what kissing is?”

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I look over to Aria, waiting for her to make sense of Sydney’s words. Aria looks back at me like she’s waiting for the same thing. “Wow.” Sydney tilts her head at us. Then she taps her finger on her chain and looks to the sky. “Hmm…how do I explain this…Do you guys have boyfriends?” Aria and I both giggle. “No,” she tells her. “We have no use for men down here.” Tyler seems offended by this. “Okay, well, do you date each other? Like other girls?” Sydney asks us. Again, Aria and I look at each other in confusion. “‘Date?’” I ask. Sydney laughs in disbelief at this, which confuses me even more. Aria looks like she’s growing impatient with the humans and this exchange. Sydney ponders for a moment then, taking a half step closer to the water, tries again. “Do you…love people? Like, what is your word for engaging in activities with people you love?” I’m growing impatient too, now, with my own lack of understanding. Mermaids have the ability to understand almost the full range of human languages, but I never knew certain words were missing from our vocabulary. Sydney looks at us, nodding. She seemed to be struggling with her own lack of understanding, nonetheless fascinated with ours. “Okay so, love is…” She takes a long pause, 91

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biting her lip while she waits for clarity to come. When it doesn’t, she looks over to Tyler. “Babe?” He looks from her to us, then shrugs. “Love is, like, when you like someone a lot.” I nod. “Oh, we know what liking things is. I like lightfish. And the moon. And Aria.” Aria glares at me and I wince silently at my forgetfulness. At least we’re even now. Sydney shakes her head, seeming to not even notice the reveal. “No, no. I mean, yes, love is like that in some senses. But what I mean is like…” There’s another pause for a while. Aria is a few seconds from shutting this down and pulling me back under but something in me wants to understand Sydney as desperately as she seems to want me to understand her. She crouches down to our eye level. “What makes your heart beat really fast?” This isn’t the question I was expecting. I look down at the water watching the marathon progression of tiny fish. The things coming to mind are all attached to fear, but I have a strong feeling that isn’t what Sydney means. I search for the answer in the water for some time, leaving space for Aria to chime in. Then suddenly it becomes as obvious and clear as the moon in the sky. “My tail.”

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Sydney looks at it and then frowns. “Hmm…I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think that’s something you’d love in the way I mean.” “So describe it to me then,” I hop off of the rock I was seated on and dip into the water, closer to both her and Aria now. “Describe what you mean.” Aria’s glare from the corner of my eye is fierce. But what she said earlier about “living if I want to” floats around my mind; we’ll never see them again, and we’ll soon return below where life is normal, but for now I want to explore up here while the window to the bizarre is open. Sydney starts again, placing her words carefully. “Love is a strong feeling, probably the strongest feeling we can have. It fills up your whole body. Takes over your mind. It’s a little scary, but when it’s good it’s the peak of happiness.” “So why is it scary?” I ask. “It’s only scary when it hurts. It only hurts when you lose it, or it’s not being reciprocated, or when you’re so afraid of something going wrong with it that it makes you anxious.” Sydney looks down speaking these words. “But that’s all in your head. That’s not what love itself is. Love is…caring about something so much, so deeply, that the feeling you have for it is bigger than the sky and the ocean put together.” Aria and I both frown at this. The humans have the earth, and from what I hear of their adventures and creations across it, it’s an expansive world for them. For us, the world is the ocean. The look in Sydney’s eyes, and her genuine fascination with just knowing we’re more than a figment of 93

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her imagination, tells me that she chose those words for a reason. There’s more to the planet from her perspective, but for me the ocean contains my home and every other home I could ever have, and the only thing I’ve ever looked up to is the sky. To put them together would be to combine both halves of all that makes me whole. Both halves of all that is. I try to imagine that; the insurmountable presence of it. It’s nearly unfathomable, so much that it invites me to fantasize about it while intimidating me all at the same time. I’m starting now to understand the fear Sydney spoke of earlier. If there’s something I could care for that deeply—so deeply that the thought of losing it incites pain and anxiety, deep enough to surpass the volume of my whole world— then it would be… “My tail.” I look up at Sydney and nod, growing more certain about my conclusion. “I think that’s the only thing I feel that way about.” To my surprise, Aria looks at me and nods too. “Yeah, I think I feel that.” Sydney seems fascinated with us in a different way now; the weight of confusion has shifted to her, and now she’s the one looking at us like we’re speaking a different language. She sighs and sits down flat on the sand. “Have you ever felt that way about another person?” “You mean, like, a mermaid?” 94

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Sydney nods. “Yeah, or just anyone else.” I start thinking of every creature I’ve interacted with: Aria and every other mermaid, the fish, the rare times I’ve seen humans in the past, all the other mammals that have made their way to the water one way or another. And then I look down at my tail. “No.” She seems still frustrated with this answer, or the way it puzzles her. Tyler’s face also spells confusion, probably at both what I’m saying and the fact that this situation is even happening at all. Aria is by my side in the water, paying close attention to my words like they’re making clear for her something that was once opaque. “You remember what you saw me and Ty doing over there? Kissing?” Sydney asks me. “So, there’s different kinds of love, right? There’s the self-love I feel for, like, my tits for example. Then there’s the kind of love I feel for friends and family. Then there’s…intimate love, romantic love. Like what Tyler and I have.” “Which is the one you were describing before? That big, deep, scary feeling?” Aria asks her. This gives Sydney pause, which tells me it isn’t as easy of a question as it sounds. “All of them, really. But the stuff about how much it consumes you, scares you, takes up your whole world…that’s the intimate, romantic love. It’s the same thing as the other kinds, but a lot more intense.” 95

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“I think that is what I feel about my tail.” I’m looking at it as I say this. I don’t usually get to see it this way; most of the time it’s just a vehicle for the rest of me—a functional thing. But this moment may be the first time I’m giving so much thought to my tail as an independent entity, a thing that I have a relationship with despite it being part of me. Sydney leans in now, knowing it’s her turn to ask for more. “Describe it to me.” “It’s…” I pause, looking for the words in my scales. “You said something earlier about reciprocation. My tail is something that carries me. Every day, in every moment, it takes me wherever I want to go safely. It lets me know when there’s danger or when I’m beginning to feel fear—it’s aware of my emotions and helps me be aware of them. And it’s so, so beautiful. It takes away the breath of anyone who gets to see it, including me. Just a glimpse of it from miles away, even just the very tip of it, has crashed boats and caused people to faint. I think there’s something glorious about that; something that adds a beauty so magical to this world that it inspires generations of folklore and stories. If I could write, it would inspire me too.” I look over to Aria, as she’s the only one here who could possibly connect in some real way to what I’m saying. But she’s now sprawled out over the rocks with her tail outstretched, looking down at it in awe. Sydney and Tyler look at us the same way. “Yeah,” I continue, the ideas settling now in my mind. “If I'm understanding correctly, that feels like what love is to me. It’s the feeling you would have for the thing that inspires you the most. And I guess I’m lucky, because I 96

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wouldn’t rather have that feeling about anything other than my tail.” “Why not?” Sydney asks. “Because it’s the one thing I know will never leave me. And I couldn’t leave it if I tried,” I tell her. “So then there’s no reason for the love to hurt me or cause fear. That, and…I mean, I’ve been swimming my whole life. It is the only thing I’ll ever do. But I enjoy it, since it’s the thing that makes me feel the most free. And the only reason I can do it is my tail. So to me, my tail makes me feel more free than anything else possibly ever could, and that seems like how you’d feel about something you love. That’s what you and Tyler have, right?” I look up from my tail to Sydney now, but she’s looking past me: into the water, to the horizon and beyond. Tyler’s eyes are locked with mine. “How did you get a tail?” Sydney asks. “What do you mean?” She turns back to me. “How do you become a mermaid?” Aria and I share a knowing look. She slides off the rocks and into the water, swimming over to grab my hand. “We have to go,” she says to the humans. “And so do you.” Aria begins to pull me away from the shore. 97

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“Wait! Please, just answer this last question and we’ll leave you alone.” Sydney takes steps into the water. Tyler grabs her arm. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Then he turns to us, waving goodbye. “We will leave you alone now. See you never.” Sydney brushes away from him and calls out to us again and again, using both of our names. Aria and I keep putting distance between ourselves and the shore, the humans, everything that just happened. But the sound of Sydney’s voice doesn’t get any farther. She’s probably confident in her swimming skills, because I can hear the giant, unafraid steps she’s taking into the water. Aria brushes her tail against mine and I can feel her thoughts sending a shiver through my scales: do not engage—let her drown if she wants to. Sydney keeps begging us to wait. We don’t, keeping our eyes forward and aiming for a spot in the distance deep enough to prevent being followed by anything without a tail. It isn’t Sydney’s voice that bothers me, but Tyler’s. He’s cursing her for being stupid enough to talk to mermaids and try following them into the ocean. The sound of his voice has grown farther and farther away, which must mean he’s still standing at the shore where we left him. We’re dangerously far out for a human and she’s stepping through the water, seconds from approaching a point where her legs won’t be able to reach the ocean floor, and who knows from there how long she’ll be able to swim if at all. And Tyler, the man who she shares this grand experience of “love” with, is standing at the shore just watching her do it. 98

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I stop swimming and turn around. This stops Sydney and Aria too. Aria opens her mouth to reprimand me, but I swim away from her and closer to Sydney. “We can give you one.” “Nova.” I ignore Aria’s booming voice behind me and focus on Sydney’s widening eyes. “What do you mean?” she asks. “A tail.” “How?” Aria inches closer to me. “Nova, the sun is going to be up soon. Quit it.” Again, I move closer to Sydney. I point down to the water to answer her question. “From down here.” Sydney tilts her head. Tyler strains to listen from the shore, only now taking steps into the water to hear better. “I…I don’t really remember it at all, but I know that at some point in the past I was up there, and then I came down here. Ever since I’ve had a tail. That’s how mermaids happen: we bring each other into the sea.” I look back to Aria and she’s behind me with her arms folded, shaking her head. She’s right to be upset; I’m being reckless, and I’ve dragged her into it, and now I’m revealing secrets that I myself don’t even understand. But it’s my 99

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truth, and I think giving the truth to someone pleading for it is the right thing to do. Half of Sydney’s sweatpants are soaked and her curls are drenched with water and sand. Yet standing there, staring at us, she glows with beauty in the moonlight. It’s a beauty that feels familiar, yet not in a way that I’ve ever seen. I can tell she sees the same thing in me. She takes one more step into the water. “Bring me into the sea.” Aria grabs my shoulder from behind. “If you don’t leave now, I will.” “Wait,” I turn to her. “Just think about it. The humans are a threat, yes, but if we take her then she’s no longer human, right? No longer a threat.” “Yes, but she’s with him.” Aria gestures over to Tyler, whose ankles are now fully submerged. “I’m not going with him. I want to go with you,” Sydney says to us. “Would you really rather come with us than stay with him? I mean, don’t you love him and all?” “I thought I did, but…I think I might have been wrong.” Sydney looks thoughtful when she says this. Then she looks at Tyler, who’s gazing at the scene from a distance. “But you won’t have to kill him, right? Since he knows now?”

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Aria laughs. “We can manipulate men’s minds. We make them forget anything we don’t want them to remember seeing.” I smile at her. She’s beside me now, closer to Sydney. I can tell she’s more open to this now, whatever’s happening between the three of us. I brush my tail against hers beneath the water and she looks at me, returning my smile. We take each other’s hands and then reach out for Sydney’s, gently pulling her toward us in the water. “Sydney! Sydney, I’m coming!” Tyler jumps into the water and begins swimming over. He’s edging closer, but not quickly enough to cause any concern. It wouldn’t matter to us, anyway. Aria and I pull Sydney close and form a circle in the water, leaning in until all three of our foreheads are touching. We wrap our tails around her legs and she shudders; I squeeze her hand for support and a similar sensation runs down my spine. A peak of orange glow just barely breaks into the sky above us. “You ready?” Aria asks Sydney. Tightening her grip around our fingers, she nods her head. Each holding one of her hands, we break the circle and turn to swim further away from the shore. Just as we pause at our dive point, Sydney looks back at Tyler one more time. I think she’s about to voice second thoughts, maybe got cold feet from seeing the new desperation with which Tyler tries to wade toward us. He’s only a few feet from us now.

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But Sydney looks back at me and says, “You know, I was wrong. I actually don’t know if I’ve ever truly loved anyone at all.” She seems not saddened by this epiphany, but empowered by it. Excited by it. Free because of it. I pull her into an embrace. Aria holds us both. Together that way, fused into a single being like a lost limb rejoining a starfish, we submerge and disappear beneath the ocean surface. Above it, Tyler floats whipping his head from side to side with stunned eyes, searching around him for a clue of where he is and how he ended up in the water.

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made a discovery when i was born my eyes were moths to the light the midwife said i had a shining inside everyone believed from afar they saw the smoke rise thought fire must be near so they were moths to me i thought my wings were woven with a false silk so i stayed close to ground lest they perish mid-air when they were torn from my back by a boy with sugar on his tongue and heat in his step who swore he really did care everyone said they saw me in a vision wrapped in a white cloth shining from the inside like a crystal ball they said they saw me up high and i didn’t fall so i believed the cloth granted me purity until i found it had been blemished by a stain a mark of a bleeding inside so it started feeling like a cage i turned it inside out so everyone couldn’t see but the blood ran too deep i painted the cloth black and donned a cloak of rebirth then everyone grieved brought offerings to the temple of my familiar held my hand and held a seance i spoke life to deaf ears so they thought i couldn’t breathe 104

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to me purity was a child’s dream (i told myself this story once it became out of reach) i never asked for a white cloth i never chose to be a martyr i doubt faith in me was the right cause i might be an impostor with time i kept spinning until the cloth fell the wings were long gone and standing as flesh and bone and water i realized that nothing is more pure than being uncovered the cloak was made of blue steel i keep my eyes to the light because i know my way home i realized that wounds heal.

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Daydream on Orchard Street The girls on the Lower East Side were vapid in a way that was almost impressive. It was calculated, their airiness; carefully curated and thoughtfully deployed, usually just to get them into the bars on Ludlow with $25 margaritas and C-list rappers on the guest list. Or to get backstage access at said rapper’s concerts in hole-in-the-wall venues, hoping to be leaving in said rapper’s car at the end of the night (or at least in the car of any other Instagram-verified member of his entourage) instead of stumbling toward Myrtle-Broadway in their micro mini skirts and Dior heels. It was a disguise that could unlock any door guarded by a man. And that was most of the doors here, literally and figuratively. So I wasn’t surprised when Kimora had shown up to the theater tonight on Timmy’s arm, sashaying down the aisle showing off the new pair of hips she returned with from their vacation in DR. In the few times I’d met her before tonight, it had become clear that she was adept at feigning the particular brand of obliviousness that translated here as charisma. And the men on the Lower East Side were as lacking in integrity as the girls were in substance, so of course Timmy made her his girlfriend. They were attracted to obliviousness because any girl too aware of their true character and intentions could become problematic.

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So all Kimora had to do was laugh, nod, and be pretty (seriously—she’d never forget to remind her social media followers that this was her only role in life) to earn and keep Timmy’s attention. He had higher standards for what he sniffed up his nose than what he put his dick in. It worked on other girls, too. It’s the reason why Kimora had walked out of the theater hand-in-hand with Vanessa and Selene, two of Timmy’s oldest friends and the neighborhood’s earliest socialites. Normally, it took much longer to get into these girl’s good graces (they’ve made people go through years of vetting before earning even a tag in group photos), but Kimora possessed a unique combination of all the key tokens of entry into their circle. Pretty, good fashion sense with a healthy balance of vintage designer and pieces fresh off last season’s runway, super skinny or busty in the right places, and charmingly oblivious. Plus, it helped that she was now dating the director of the music video—sorry, music film experience— that we just came from watching. Dating a guy who was on the list for all the parties, friends with all the micro-celebrities and a few of the macroones, and had his own semi-local clout from various creative endeavors was the master token of entry. I knew because it’s how I ended up here, walking through the lower Manhattan streets on a Wednesday evening in Autumn, listening to Vanessa and Selene ramble about a girl who kept popping up to events wearing outfits a week after they’d posted wearing the same thing. To shorten a story too long and too distant to divulge now, a couple years ago I was dating a rapper. (Clearly a rookie mistake in hindsight, yet an inexorable experience of the early twenties nonetheless.) We broke up for reasons I 107

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barely remembered, but while we dated I was brought to enough parties and plus-one’d on enough lists to become a recurring character among his friend group long after the relationship ended. Time moved so fast in LES that by now, most of them couldn’t even remember when I started coming around or who had brought me. Timmy was the first one I became cool with, since I was in film school during that relationship so he would let me shadow and assist on his music video sets. Once I graduated and started working with big names in music and fashion, the girls started inviting me out and buying me drinks and tagging me in photos. So I stuck around even after the breakup. In fairness, I think they also genuinely liked me. And I liked them too, but I knew the fact that I had some access to fancy spaces and rubbed shoulders with a few fancy people was a motivating factor for keeping me around. It wasn’t that they wanted friends who could get them into rooms they couldn’t enter (that’s a little bit more LA)—they wanted friends with their own access so we could all walk into the rooms together. A hot girl by herself in one of these rooms could attract some of the important people in it. A group of hot girls in these rooms, to everyone around them, looked like important people themselves. And if they showed up together enough times, it became true. “Timmy, what bar are we going to, babe?” Kimora slurred these words, her eyelash extensions almost fully eclipsing her half-opened eyes. “Hopefully none for you,” James, another friend in the circle, replied to her. The group broke into laughter; Timmy had invited thirty of us to the private early screening of his film (an evening hosted at a local theater and sponsored by Jägermeister) and almost all of those people were together 108

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now, walking in a rowdy progression searching for the afters. “Alright, everybody stop,” Timmy halted at the corner and the group gathered on the sidewalk, forcing passersby into the street to get around us. “This is getting ridiculous. Where are we going?” “I thought we said Vino’s?” Mikey asked. “Vino’s is burnt out,” Kev said. “We should do Keys. My boy Jah is working the door tonight.” Selene threw her head back and groaned. “Can we go somewhere that has food? All I had today was that popcorn. I’m gonna get too drunk.” “Word. Skinny’s got good eats,” Tony said. Timmy nodded at this, along with a few others. “I could fuck with that.” “Their food is literally trash.” This from Vanessa. “But,” Timmy raised a finger with a smirk, “their drinks are strong.” This was met with nods and a few extended yeeaaaaahs. “You talking about their drinks strong. Nigga, you look more lit right now than your girlfriend,” James said. Again the group laughed, Selene the hardest; even in her drunkenness I could tell she found satisfaction in her title being announced and affirmed in front of everyone. 109

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[Also, for context, Timmy was white. Not the only white man here, but one of few—there were more white girls than guys, since the girls were able to achieve through hair and makeup a kind of ambiguity that was pretty popular around these parts. But Timmy had the most money, so everyone affectionately called him ‘my nigga,’ treated him accordingly, and, quiet as its kept, gave him a pass to say it back every now and then when everyone was too drunk to care.] “This was the pregame. Just wait ‘til you see how I’m about fuck Skinny’s up.” Cheers erupted when Timmy said this to James, and then a few people began trickling across the street, heading for chapter two of a night that would probably turn into a ten-part saga. The rest of us broke into smaller groups on the sidewalk. I stood with Vanessa, Selene, Kimora, and a few of the other current/ex/soon-to-be girlfriends of the group. “Is that the vibe? Because I feel like that doesn’t have to be the vibe,” Vanessa said, taking a pull from her vape. “Well, that’s definitely where I’m going,” Kimora said. Obviously. Selene shrugged and turned to me. “What are you tryna do?” I forced a yawn. “I gotta be up early in the morning, so I don’t know. Might be a dub.” The rest of them just nodded. Sometimes I’d forget how normal it was for this group to stay out until four in the morning on weeknights. This was what most of them did for a living—hanging out with each 110

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other, going to events, showing up to bars, with a little modeling or drug dealing or photography in between. The rest of the girls decided to go to Skinny’s to keep Kimora company amidst the meat fest, so we started hugging and saying our goodbyes. The other smaller groups on the sidewalk did this too, and in a moment everyone dispersed off into their own directions. I started walking in the direction of Grand Street. It was around the time of night the trains started acting funny, and I was too inebriated and too pretty to be sitting in that station for thirty minutes. So I picked up my pace, about to start pushing past the loud groups of twenty-somethings, when I heard a voice call me from behind. “Bria?” I turned around to see Andre. He was another recurring character in the group, known among them and beyond them for his work as a designer. Usually these types heard that and thought fashion, which he did work in, but on the graphics and visuals side. He was always a calm but consistent presence among them. “Oh, hey,” I smiled. “I didn’t even see you at the theater.” “Yeah, I was in the cut for most of it. You not going with them?” “Nah, I think I’ll call it a night. You?” “Same here. Nothing at Skinny’s seems that enticing to me right now.” 111

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I chuckled. “Well I’ll see you around then. Get home safe.” “You too.” I turned around again headed toward Grand. I was halfway up the block now, fishing my headphones out of the pocket of my jeans. When I found them and picked my head up, Andre was standing in front of me. I paused, then frowned, and we both laughed. “I just, uh, had a question,” He smiled coyly, aware and seemingly apologetic about interrupting my walk a second time. “I hope it’s a good one,” I retorted. “How drunk are you?” “Not drunk yet. A strong tipsy.” He nodded. “Wanna get one last drink before we go home?” I widened my eyes. “We?” Andre laughed and quickly shook his head. “No, no. Not like that.” “Oh, I thought you were trying to come home with me for a second.”

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Still laughing, he said, “Nah. I’m just trying to get you a little more drunk and then send you on your merry, solo way.” I muttered an mm-hmm while scanning him over. I’d never taken the time to really look at Andre, mostly because I never had a reason to. Besides being the kind of person who naturally kept my eyes to myself and the ground, he was also just someone I didn’t get to interact with beyond a hello and goodbye most of the time. We had the same friends but because the group was so big, some people ended up on opposite sides of it. We’d meet in the middle at parties, sharing fleeting conversations at bars that never went much further. This had been the case for Andre and I; but every time those conversations happened, however fleeting, they were pleasant. He was pleasant and funny and mostly just focused on his art, which were surprisingly rare qualities. I knew that he was easy to talk to. And here under the white light reflecting from the corner store next to us, I could tell that he wasn’t difficult to look at, either. There were worse people to get a drink with. Plus, in true Vanessa/Selene fashion I could probably finesse an Uber home, which was better than the train ride waiting for me. I nodded. “Anywhere but Skinny’s.”

A few months ago, Vanessa saw her ex walking into a bar with a Wilhelmina model. Obviously, she stormed over to the bar ready to confront him and was stopped by a bouncer who informed her that particular night was invite-only. She left, but a few batted eyelashes and close-friends posts later 113

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she was able to not only find out what event was happening at the bar and who was hosting, but she found the host himself. She made herself his date to the event and walked in with him, Selene and I following close behind, and ever since she’s said that the look on her ex’s face when he saw her made all the effort worth it. After that it kind of became one of our usual spots, and every time we went we’d laugh about that story. But when Andre asked me if I’d ever been here before after the very same bouncer from that night allowed us inside, I said I hadn’t. We pushed our way down a tight corridor to find vacant seats. I walked in front of Andre, and I could feel his hand lightly on my forearm guiding me through the people. We finally came to two empty seats at the end of the bar; he pulled out both and we sat side by side. “So I’m guessing you’re a tequila kinda girl, right?” He asked. “How’d you know?” “Lucky guess.” He shrugged with a satisfied smile. He turned to catch the bartender’s attention. “Well, you’re right, but I actually don’t think that’s my vibe right now.” Andre turned back to me. “I see. Something calmer?” I nodded. “Wine?” “Perfect,” I said. I was grateful to not have had to explain too much, probably because that wasn’t what he was truly 114

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in the mood for either. If we wanted to down tequila shots, we would’ve joined the group at Skinny’s. He caught the bartender’s eye and called him over. He leaned over the bar and spoke words I couldn’t hear into his ear. The bartender nodded, went off to the other side of the bar, and returned with two glasses and a fancy-looking bottle containing an amber orange liquid. I made an impressed face at Andre while he poured out our glasses, and he chuckled. “Is orange wine for pretentious assholes?” I picked up my glass and toasted with his then brought it to my lips. The wine was dry but rich with flavor, and certainly felt smoother going down my chest than tequila would’ve. “Pretentious assholes with refined taste,” I said. He drank to that with a laugh. The spot was lively for a weeknight, but not as chaotic and intense as other local spots could be. We were sitting at the bar and didn’t have to shout to hear each other’s voices, remarkably. The sounds in the space were mild enough that I could feel the silence between us. “So, when did you start calling me Bria?” “Did I not always call you that?” “I don’t actually remember. But I know that I introduce myself to people with my full name, so I’m always curious about how people who use the nickname arrived there.”

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Andre thought for a moment, stirring the wine glass against the bar counter. “I think that’s how Gray first introduced you. So I just kept using the first name I heard.” I gave a silent nod. Of course. Again, it had been so long ago now (two years, but in LES time that might as well have been five) and everything about us was old news. But that’s why it made my skin feel tight every time Gray was brought up in relation to me, especially among this crowd—I felt like any mention of him was a reminder to them that I actually hadn’t been around that long; that I was a second-hand addition, an extension of a ghost. (He wasn’t dead, just too busy these days to come around much and not particularly rushing to because of how often I did.) I also wondered if members of the group that had been closer to Gray, like Andre, ever thought that I was the reason they saw less of him now and resented me for it. Andre must’ve seen the look on my face, because he gave me a smile and said, “I won’t bring him up again.” He was wearing one of those plain crew necks that looks unsuspectingly expensive, Diesel jeans, and tiny gold studs in both earlobes. He was not pretentious nor an asshole (especially in comparison to a lot of the people he knew), but his tastes were certainly refined. Every time I saw Andre he looked effortlessly curated, so much that I’d never thought about it until now. Even the glint in his bronze eyes under the bar’s dimmed lights and the fingers playing idly in his short hair seemed spontaneous, but I could tell that he wanted me to study the details. He wanted me to be aware of him. “So do you like Sabria or Bria better?” 116

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“Since you told me where you got Bria from, let’s go with the former.” “Okay, Sabria.” One reason I sometimes gave people my nickname was that they pronounced my full one in a way I didn’t like to hear, but it sounded pretty coming off of his lips. “How come you didn’t go party with your friends?” I took another sip of wine. “Well unlike them I have, you know, real adult responsibilities.” Andre nodded, finding humor in this. “I do know how that is. I have to be up kind of early tomorrow myself. “Wait, you have a job?” I laughed at myself for being so crass. “I mean, I thought you were freelancing.” “I was but yeah, I got a real grown-up job. Still in graphic design but at this advertising agency now,” he explained. “I still freelance on the side, though. The creative world is cool but it’s also weird, especially the people. And I needed a more steady stream of income.” “I totally get that! I work at a production company and freelance on the side too. But it’s funny because a lot of my friends, our friends, don’t get it. Like I can’t really talk to them about work stuff because they don’t understand why I won’t leave in the middle of the weekday to come to a popup. Or why I can’t spend six weeks exploring Europe with them over the summer.” Andre poured more wine into our glasses while he listened to me. He handed me mine and watched me take a sip. 117

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“Why do you hang out with them?” I swallowed. “What do you mean?” “Vanessa, Selene, Timmy, everybody. You talk about them like you don’t have a lot in common with them, but you’re always with them.” “Well technically, I only know them because of Gray. That’s why I started hanging out with them, because of hanging out with him.” “You never seemed to have that much in common with him either.” I frowned. “You and Gray are close friends. What do y’all have in common?” “I don’t know if I would say close,” Andre clarified. “And we actually don’t have that much in common. What does that have to do with anything?” “Well, you and I both know these people. And here we are, sitting here together.” “Yeah, but that doesn’t have to mean we’re around them for the same reasons. Maybe you just have more in common with them than we do with each other.” I found the boyish smile on his face less endearing now. “Maybe you are a pretentious asshole.” Andre chuckled and held up two surrendering hands. Then we simultaneously reached for our glasses and 118

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downed their contents. He looked at me again. “Can I ask you a question?” “You ask a lot of questions.” He’d actually only asked a few so far, but I was growing annoyed with them already. “You inspire a lot of questions.” We locked eyes for a moment. I was slightly impressed with the reply but hid it. I gave him a nod of approval. “What’s your biggest fear?” “Damn, at least take me out to dinner first before you bring out the intrusive ones.” Andre and I laughed together, and then I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know, though. I don’t really think I have an answer.” “Okay, if I get you another drink can I ask you something else?” “Go ahead. I’m getting drunk already,” I said, sipping the last of the wine we had left. Andre summoned the bartender again and ordered two of the night’s specials. A few moments later, he brought us two black rum cocktails. We toasted, and then just when I was bringing the cup to my lips for another sip, he asked his question. “Do you think that you’re afraid of being like them?” I took a bigger sip from the glass than originally planned and set it back down. “Like who?” “Gray. The girls you hang out with.” 119

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“It seems like asking me is your way of telling me.” Andre shook his head. “No, I’m not telling you. I’m genuinely asking if that’s something you’re afraid of. Of becoming emotionally stunted and impulsive like Gray is. Or becoming airheaded and unambitious like Vanessa and Selene are.” “I never called any of those people any of those things.” “What I’m asking, Sabria, is if those are things that you’re afraid of becoming.” He spoke with the cautious delicacy of a therapist delivering a hypothesis they knew their patient wouldn't want to hear. “And if you surround yourself with those people because you find comfort in how opposite they are to you. They can’t fully connect with who you are, but you keep them around as reminders of everything that you aren’t.” I didn’t know if it was the alcohol or if he’d been harboring these thoughts about me all along, but I didn’t like the things Andre was saying to me. Not because I thought they were true, but they were bringing up memories and thoughts of Gray that I didn’t need to explore and he’d promised he wouldn’t bring him up again. And, after all, I came here suspecting that he brought me here to flirt with me which would result in free drinks and a ride home. If I knew he’d brought me here to psychoanalyze me, I would’ve taken the train. “No,” I said, already finishing the cocktail. “That’s a silly thing to be afraid of. But, honestly, so is everything else.” “So you’re not afraid of anything?” 120

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I shook my head. “Nothing I can think of.” Andre smiled and downed the rest of his drink. “Okay, miss big and bad. I was gonna get you an Uber home, but since you’re not afraid of anything the train should be fine, right?” I sucked my teeth and gave him a come on look, and he leaned into me with his laughter. “Okay fine, you got me,” I surrendered. “You can call it now.”

Andre stood outside the bar waiting with me. The car was apparently three minutes away, so we just watched the skateboarders doing their tricks up and down Allen Street. “Thank you,” I said to him. He looked away from the skaters and down at me. I felt smaller in his gaze now, out here, than I did sitting with him at the bar; maybe even ever before. “For what?” “The drinks, the ride, the invitation.” He smiled, turning his full body to face me now. “Thank you for accepting it.” I broke our eye contact and let out a sigh. “So are you gonna get your ride home after I leave?” “Actually, Timmy and them hit me up to ask if I was still around so I might head back to Skinny’s.” 121

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I shook my head. “You better than me.” Just then, a black Toyota Camry pulled up with the correct license plate number. He walked me to the car and pulled me in for a hug. It was brief, less intrusive than his line of questioning, but warmer than I was expecting. Leaving much to be longed for in its ephemerality. “Well, I hope you wake up in time for your responsibilities in the morning,” I said to him. “Shit, me too,” he laughed. “Text me when you get home, alright?” I nodded and he opened the car door for me to get in the backseat and then closed it behind me. I waved from the inside and he walked away. The driver repeated the address of the destination, my apartment in Brooklyn, to me. “All set?” “Uh…” My eyes were still focused on Andre. He was a few feet away, looking at his phone and preparing to walk to the curb to cross the street, but I knew he still had the car in his peripheral. “One sec,” I said to the driver. I opened the door again. Andre noticed this, turning his head to look over with a frown. I stayed put inside the car watching him approach. He placed a hand on top of the opened door and looked at me questioningly. “Come home with me,” I said. Now he looked even more confused—unsure whether he’d heard me right or whether I was serious. But he leaned in closer. “Why?” 122

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“Because I’m scared of being alone.” Andre’s face relaxed some. He looked at the driver, who was looking back at us. Then he looked at his phone. Whatever or whoever was in it could not have been very enticing, because in a matter of seconds Andre stuffed it away in his pocket, gazed into my eyes, and then dove into the backseat like there was a home waiting in me.

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erzulie i am the waterfall chased by rivers and lakes i am a well filled with clear poison i am the step you weren’t warned to mind i am the cold sweet not made for cones i am a story written with what looks like pencil and paper but is really engraved in stone i must be after all all the things in the eye of my beholders there must be a drought in me but they leave with dry brittle hands holding fresh flowers for me to keep in fact they don’t ever leave that flaw could be theirs or mine drugs can kill you fast or slow stuck either way in the grip of time blocking your blessings is looking at a mirror and choosing to see a curse the true ones are those past mistakes we can’t reverse i would show you how to break it but i’d have to teach you the spells i could give you the ingredients show you how to make it but you can tell the love is missing from how it smells i am the waterfalls they warned you not to chase you took brave steps toward a forbidden feast and found your undoing in the taste 125

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i’m rarely subtle with how i exist sweet and hard like sugar cane tough both to chew and to resist strands of me stuck between your teeth as little reminders that i came

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Forever Sixteen The last time all five of us were in a room together was a random day in July. It had been a few weeks since the last time before that— Princess was on vacation, Bryan was taking double shifts and barely had time after his engineering classes, Vince was off somewhere being Vince, and I was going through a breakup. So I was already mentally prepared for it to be a sad summer, at least for me. But the next few weeks brought with them a melancholy that none of us were equipped to handle and couldn’t have seen coming. That day, though, was exactly fourteen days before Zaire’s birthday. And since everyone had been so busy lately, we decided to all meet at his house to plan how we were going to celebrate. We were thinking of hosting a barbecue in his backyard and wanted to parse out the details in person. Plus, Princess wanted to fill me in on all the details of her time in Turks & Caicos, and the boys just wanted to smoke together. So we gathered. I was the last to arrive. I could already hear the loud voices and Princess’ shrill laughter when I approached the back door of Zaire’s house. It was the same entrance I used back when we were kids and his late grandfather would sit in the kitchen near the front door, snoring away in his chair. Zaire, Vince and I would watch TV on the living room sofa for as long as we could until something made Vince snicker 127

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loud enough to stir grandpa from his sleep. He always woke up in a rage, so we’d dash downstairs to the basement as soon as his eyes opened and spend the rest of the day down there with no TV. That might be why we eventually picked up smoking—I mean, it was probably inevitable, but there really was nothing else for us to do. So I was not surprised by the loud smell that hit my nose once Zaire opened the door for me. I flashed a big grin that dropped when he didn’t return it. He stood in the door with his eyes to the ceiling and his mouth closed, waiting for something. “Well?” I looked around. “Well?” “So you gonna come to my house and not tell me happy birthday?” “Boy if you don’t—” I pushed past him and walked into the house. “Your birthday is in a whole two weeks.” “And this is my whole house.” It was true; the silver lining of his grandpa’s death was that he now had the house all to himself. I wasn’t sure if his name was actually on any documents, but it wasn’t like anyone else was coming to claim it. He had a complicated relationship with his parents, which was how he ended up living with his grandpa in the first place, so they weren’t around and weren’t ever going to be. Zaire locked the back door behind us and continued, “I just want a little respect.” 128

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“And did you ask for this respect from any of the other people down there?” “No, but I’ve known you the longest so my standards for you are higher.” I rolled my eyes. We headed down the stairs to what he often referred to as the “lion’s den,” yet another play off of his zodiac sign. Princess was on the couch playing her Nintendo Switch and Bryan and Vince were sitting at the table over the usual assortment of materials. “Ahhh! My bitch is here!” Princess shrieked when she saw me and did a little dance on her way over to me. I laughed and hugged her, choking from the tight squeeze of her arm around my neck. “I missed you too, babe. Now let go.” She released me and I exhaled. She took my face into her hands and stared into my eyes, searching for an answer before she asked the question. “Are you okay?” I nodded. “I’m fine.” “Did you bring weed?” Vince, of course, was the one asking. I gave him a look and Princess glared at him. But I pulled the pack out of my jeans pocket and placed it in Zaire’s hand.

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“Happy birthday,” I gave a sarcastic smile and he beamed, pulling me into a hug that I dramatically pushed away. “Good,” Vince said to me. “‘Cause if you gonna smoke all our weed ‘cause you’re sad, you better bring your own.” “Vince, would you shut the fuck up? Like, seriously.” Princess said these words to him maybe every single time we were together. He flashed her the middle finger, which was his usual response. I walked over to hug Bryan before sitting between him and Vince at the table. “I am not sad.” The four of them exchanged glances back and forth with each other, and then looked back down at what they were doing. I scoffed. “No, for real y’all. I’m serious. Fuck him.” Princess started clapping. “Period!” “Yeah, ight,” Zaire said. “Let’s see how that goes when he comes back in two months saying he wants to talk.” Princess giggled at this and I gave her a look of disappointment. “On a serious note though, Narai,” Bryan said to me, licking the spliff he was almost finished rolling, “it’s okay to feel things. And if the breakup with Ade is affecting you, especially so soon after it happened, it’s okay to admit that. It’s normal to feel hurt and with time, that’ll pass.” 130

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This time, the four of us looked back and forth from each other to him. Vince sucked his teeth. “This nigga a therapist now?” We all laughed and Bryan shook his head. It was my first real, big, genuine laugh in what felt like days. I was over Ade—I’d been outgrowing the relationship for some time anyway and, like Princess had said, these days he was objectively less attractive than he used to be—but Bryan was right. I was still feeling things, which was to be expected after discovering I was cheated on by the person I’d been dating since high school. But that’s why I needed today to be about everything but that. “I’m not pressed over him. It’s summer, anyway, so the last thing I’m thinking about is a man.” I remembered Zaire next to me and squeezed his shoulder. “Except the one with the birthday coming up, of course. I would much rather be talking about that than Ade.” Zaire clapped his hands once. “Me fucking too. I want my shit to be a movie this year.” “I wanted that too so I started planning my birthday trip four months ago,” Princess said. “With two weeks to plan, your shit is about to be a commercial.” Bryan snickered. “Now wait a second, you can get a lot planned out in two weeks. And he’s not a girl, like us,” I said to Princess. “Men don’t have as much prep to do. They will throw on some 131

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designer jeans and show up anywhere there’s bitches and bottles.” She nodded in agreement. “Hold on real quick—Princess,” Vince turned toward the couch. She rolled her eyes, preparing for nonsense. “You said that lil’ Turks trip was a movie? ‘Cause I saw the trailer on your Instagram and it was giving bootleg.” Bryan, Zaire and Vince burst into laughter, cut off by Princess chucking a pillow from the couch at Vince’s head. “Sassy and a fan. Tragic.” “You know what was really a movie?” Zaire asked. “Remember Isaiah’s sweet sixteen?” A nostalgic round of ooohs passed through the room. It was probably six or seven years ago, but I could still remember (and almost taste) the bitterness of the white rum we’d smuggled into school that day in Poland Spring bottles to pregame. By the end of that night, Princess’ mom drove us home unconscious in the backseat of her car. It was the most legendary story of my first time getting drunk I could ask for, one of those you-just-had-to-be-there moments. “Damn, I miss when life was like that,” Princess said. I wanted to say me too, but I missed it for more reasons than I had the emotional capacity to reminisce over today. “Like what? A sweet sixteen?” Vince asked. “Hell yeah!” Princess said. “We were so happy for no reason. Not a bill to pay in sight.” 132

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“I feel like a sweet sixteen is the perfect liminal space,” Bryan said. “Before that you’re too young to really be lit, and after that is when you’re supposed to start thinking about life after high school and who you want to be and all. But at sixteen, you don’t have to be anything. Like, if heaven was a place, I feel like it would be a sweet sixteen.” Vince picked up a lighter from the table and brought it to the spliff hanging from his lips. “Bryan.” “Hmm?” “After I light this, I don’t wanna hear another big word.” Bryan rolled his eyes again at our laughter. Vince lit it and then it started making its rounds. Princess hit it, passed it to me, and then sat with a thoughtful expression on her face for a while. “What y’all think heaven would be like if it was real?” She asked the room. “You don’t think heaven is real?” “No, I mean like…well I mean, I ain’t never died before. So I actually don’t know,” she said. “But I meant real as in physical. Like a place you could go to and come back from.” We were silent for a while after this, probably too high to ponder the question. It felt too big even for my mind in that moment, but it invited thoughts that were different from the ones about Ade I’d been trying to repress.

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“A happy place, probably,” I answered her. Everyone looked at me, listening. “A place where you could never feel sad.” “Damn, that sounds too good to be true,” Bryan said. “Everything about heaven sounds too good to be true,” Zaire replied. Bryan nodded at this realization. “I feel like heaven got the most exotic weed.” Vince took a long pull while saying this, letting the smoke float up to the ceiling. The boys agreed with them. “Heaven probably got exotic bundles,” Princess giggled. “I feel like it’s probably decorated so nicely,” I said. “Big plants everywhere, lots of windows, colorful art.” “An endless supply of snacks for when you get the munchies.” “A place where money doesn’t exist, so you never need any.” “A place where you always feel beautiful, no matter what.” “A place with no opps ‘cause they can’t get in.” This from Vince, of course. “And it probably has all kinds of art supplies, so you could try any hobby you wanted to learn and never get bored.”

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“Yeah, I feel like heaven is definitely a place where boredom doesn’t exist.” “Right, ‘cause there’s so much to do.” “Or because it’s so peaceful that you don’t always feel the need to be doing anything.” Bryan had been quiet, listening to us popcorn these ideas back and forth. Then he broke into laughter. “So y’all really think that, like, if you put all that shit in a room together it would be heaven?” “We could do that.” Zaire said this with a plain expression. Bryan stared at him and then laughed some more. “What, like, put heaven inside a room?” Princess asked. Zaire nodded. “Yeah. If we wanted to, we could actually do that.” “Where?” “In the shed, out back,” he said. “I’ve already been fixing it up anyway. Once I’m done cleaning everything out, I won’t really be using it for anything other than storage.” Bryan shook his head. “I don’t know. Niggas was just talking.” “Okay, yes, but why not actually do it though, Bryan?” Princess sat up on the couch now with her arms clasped in front of her. “It could be fun.” 135

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“Yeah, but it’s not real. It would be for no reason.” “Well, like we were just saying,” I turned to Bryan, “back in the sweet sixteen days we were happy for no reason. Why do we need a reason now?” Everyone in the room nodded, collectively warming up to the thought of what we were talking about becoming more than an idea. Vince shrugged his shoulders. “You got a point. I’m down.” “Bet. I should be done cleaning out the shed this weekend, so after that we can get started,” Zaire said. “I can come over and help you if you want,” I said. He nodded at me with a smile. “We can all help you,” Princess said, and then cut herself off with a gasp. “Wait—we could do that for your birthday!” “Put a bunch of shit in a room?” Vince raised a brow. “No, silly. We could prepare the room with everything we want to be in it and then use it for something on his birthday. It could be the celebration for just the five of us before the lit shit.” “That’s actually a good idea, Princess,” I said. “We could get everything ready over the next two weeks and then use the celebration to kind of christen the space. Maybe do a cake-cutting or something. Or whatever Zaire wants.”

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Zaire shrugged. “I’ll handle getting the shed ready and then y’all can handle the rest.” Princess grinned with excitement. “Leave it up to me and Narai. We’ll bring everyone’s dreams together and put them in our little heaven room and decorate it all nice. It’ll be a vibe. We’ll make it so beautiful.” And we did make it beautiful. But standing in the shed two months after that conversation, after both the world we lived in and the world we imagined had been turned upside down, I couldn’t feel anything but repulsion toward everything around me.

We never got to light candles here. In fact, the room had never seen fire—we planned to smoke here together as part of the christening that never happened. Everything we were planning to put or do inside the room fell apart, taking with it any semblance of those things that existed outside the room, too. It was supposed to be perfect, utopic. It was supposed to be heaven. But instead, we had created our own personal hell. There was no joy left, no creativity, no inspiration, no beauty to be found. All the feelings that were to be held in this space were now gone from all of our lives. The things were left, though, mostly because they were already brought in before tragedy struck. And after, no one had the strength to come back and remove them. No one had the strength to return to the scene of the crime and face what we’d done.

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I came here on his birthday. Ten days before his death he was already asking me to wish him a happy birthday, so despite the burning hot tears that wouldn’t stop falling from my eyes and melting down layers of my skin, I came. Because I owed him that respect. Because—even though the concept of a world beyond, whether above or below, was something I’d entirely and permanently given up on believing in or even caring about—if there was some part of him existing somewhere in some way, it would want to be celebrated that day. So I came. It wasn’t much of a celebration. I brought the materials to construct his altar, including candles I couldn’t bring myself to light, and cried alone for so long that when I stopped it was no longer his birthday anymore. Then I laid there on the floor of the shed, angry at time for moving on from observing him. For making his life so short. For refusing to move backwards. Today, everything was the same as I’d left it. The ten white prayer candles that would remain unlit until I found something to pray to. The scattered items Princess and I had managed to get into the room before it was too late— crayons, paint, canvases and other art supplies; her bundles, never to be touched or even looked at by her again; three pots holding dying plants that would remain dead until I found a reason to water them. There had been even more before: miscellaneous decorations, a sign Vince made that said No Opps Allowed, some weed. Anything no longer here had been destroyed by me the last time I came. I allowed the pain to pass through me while it was still his birthday, but once I rose from the ground and it was yet another meaningless, hopeless day, I wanted nothing more than to fight God. 138

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And if this place was really heaven, it was the closest I could get to Him. So I tore it all down. I did bring something new that day other than the prayer candles to replace the birthday ones we’d initially brought. On the floor in the center of the back wall sat a big poster displaying what was now my favorite photo of us—the five of us at Isaiah’s house, the day of his sweet sixteen. We sat together on his front steps with red cups in our hands, cheesing with glee at our first explorations of teenage delinquency. The photo was everything this room was supposed to be. Now, the people in it didn’t even speak. Princess and I tried to be there for each other, but we were the ones most involved in creating and preparing and designing the room that was supposed to celebrate Zaire’s life. Now that it hosted the memorial of his death, we just didn’t have much to say to each other anymore. Nothing we were strong enough to say yet. Bryan couldn’t even look me in the eye at the funeral. It’s why he’d never stepped foot in this room; before the tragedy he was just neutral and a bit uninterested, and after it he resented this room for jinxing his friend’s life. And, by extension, he resented Princess and I for helping to create it. I couldn’t blame him. We were all struggling with an anger that we had nowhere to place but on each other. Vince and I, as Zaire’s oldest friends in the group, were the most deeply broken. So deeply that we didn’t speak and didn’t have to; I knew there was no resentment, just an unhealed wound that our silence was the only bandage for. 139

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We were similar, Vince and I—cut enough times in life that we knew how to bleed alone in the dark. Today’s return to the shed was my bloodletting. The room had never seen fire and something needed to burn. I flicked the lighter in my hand, crouched down, and went from candle to candle. Ten flames were now before me, sending a light up to the poster sitting above them. There was a glimmer from the flames over Zaire’s face in the sweet sixteen picture now, and for the first time since his death I could see the light in his eyes again. I fell to my knees. It felt good to fall, but I wanted to break. I wanted to throw the candles against the walls until the flames brought everything down on top of me. I wanted a wrecking ball to swing through my mind and crush the idea of a heaven in a room, the worst one I’ve ever had. I wanted to walk into traffic, lay on the road, and be crushed and flattened the way that vehicle did to my friend four days before his birthday. I wanted to understand why the people in charge—God, parents, politicians—never seemed to know how to make things fair. My forehead touched the floor. I wanted to cry but the well inside me had run dry, at least for today. I decided to lay there and simply wait for death to come. “Get up.” I bolted so violently up from the floor that I almost knocked over all the candles. I turned around and saw something that made me face the candles again and close my eyes. I had cursed God so much that he was playing tricks on me now. Maybe I deserved that. 140

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I heard a sing-songy voice: “Narai-aaa, papayaaa…” Suddenly, the well was full again. Tears flowed from me with a searing thickness. I heard myself mutter the word please, and I wanted to say it again and again. I wanted to cry my pleas for it all to stop: the reality I’d been forced to accept, the false one that was now only making my pain worse, the beating of my broken heart. But my mouth was full of tears and words I couldn’t say to a spirit that couldn’t hear. I felt my knees buckling again. They were about to give out—they did, in fact, and I was already halfway to the ground when two arms scooped me up by my own, holding me up from behind by my shoulders. I would’ve fainted from the fear if I wasn’t being held up. When I heard the voice a moment ago I knew I was hallucinating, since the only person who had ever called me like that was gone. It sounded like his voice but obviously wasn’t, so I ignored it. But now, when I was devoid of strength and had no legs to stand on, something was holding me up. I couldn’t have been imagining it because I was too weak to have been doing it myself. I sensed a warmth on my right side. A hand pulled my hair back from over my ear, and then the voice said my name again. I turned slowly, but it took only half a second before I recognized the golden highlights in his coily curls. The scream that came out of me must’ve been heard by the dolphins in the Atlantic.

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Zaire—whatever the projection in front of me was— rushed over to the floor where I had landed and forced a hand over my mouth. I struggled against it at first and then went limp under the realization of what was happening. There was a hand covering my mouth, a hand attached to an arm coming from the body of something that appeared to be Zaire, and it was physically stopping me from speaking. It was a physical thing with its own power. Like a person. But it couldn’t have been. “Will you scream again?” Zaire asked. It sounded more like him every time I heard it. I shook my head no. He gave me this look: lifted his chin, tilted his head a bit to the side, pursed his lips, squinted his eyes. I shook my head again because I recognized this as the confirmation look. It was how he looked at me when he wanted to be sure or wanted me to be sure. It was the “you promise?” look. He removed his hand from over my mouth. I wanted to scream again, louder this time, but I’d promised. “Z-zaire?” My voice shook, but I tried to push the word out from my diaphragm. He smiled. “Man, was I waiting for you to light those candles for a while.” I looked over at the prayer candles, ten licking flames still sending a glimmer up to his eye. I looked back to his face and found the same sparkle I’d always known. “What is this?”

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He rose to his feet and held out his hand for me. “You wanna stand up?” “What is this?” I was still seated, sliding away from him on the floor with my arms. “Who are you? Why are you here?” “Stop.” Zaire closed the gap of space between us. “I’ve always been here.” Too puzzled to speak, I allowed him to continue. “I was waiting for you to light the candles. You just needed a flame to see.” I exhaled, struggling with what was in my line of vision now. “See what?” Zaire flashed a smile, his signature, that made me both excited and sorrowful. “Me.” My confusion took some of the weight off of my pain now that they shared space in my mind, so I was able to slowly rise up from the floor to my feet. “I don’t understand. You’re dead, Zaire.” He shook his head. “I’ve been here the whole time.” I stared at him blankly. “You have to be more specific or I’m going to faint.” Zaire chuckled. Then he inched closer to me and dropped his voice to a slow whisper. “I’ve seen everything that happened in this room since the accident.” 143

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This made the nausea in my stomach worse. He was acknowledging the event that resulted in his death, but not the death itself? “You…you saw me on your birthday?” Zaire nodded, but his face grew somber. “I’m sorry, Narai. I wanted to be there for you. To pick you up off the floor and hold you and blow out my birthday candles with you. I was standing here the whole time wishing you’d light them. All you really needed was to spark the flame.” Again, I looked over to the candles. The glimmer in his eye in the photo seemed to have grown larger now. “Have any of the others been here?” Zaire shook his head somberly again. “Just you.” I’d already known this fact, and didn’t need confirmation from a strange spiritual entity, but something about hearing him say it made it sound like the saddest breaking news. I wanted to find words to say to Zaire now that I was really looking at him, something I thought I would never be able to do again and had so many words prepared for the next dimension where I could. But now that we were together in this one, I couldn’t find eloquence. He looked at me this time with a lighter expression. “But, see, that’s why I wanted you to light the flame. So you could see me and I could tell you that I want you to come with me.” “Come with you where?” 144

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“Here.” I looked around us at the broken-down, renovated and then broken-down-again shed. There was pain oozing from the pores of everything in it, from the dead plants to me. “I am here, Zaire.” “No, I mean—” He paused, looking for the words. There were none that could adequately contextualize for me the bizarreness I was experiencing. “I mean here. Come with me here, to what this room is.” I stared at him for a while and then took two more steps back, questioning the true identity of whatever I was communicating with. “To heaven? You want me to die?” Zaire outstretched his arms. “Do I look dead to you?” “Zaire…” The room was starting to spin. I placed my hands over my temples and slid down the wall, back to the floor again. This felt like being drunk for the first time again, but without any of the excitement. Zaire followed me down to the floor, crouching in front of me. I couldn’t look at him—couldn’t stand to behold the paradoxical complexity of what he was and couldn’t hold my own head up with my neck—but he lifted my chin with a finger so I met his serious gaze. “Narai, you know I would never let anything bad happen to you, right?” He paused for confirmation that I simply couldn’t give. “I love you so much; more than you ever knew. I could never let you step into harm’s way. That’s why I want you to come with me.” 145

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He rose again to his feet and stepped closer to the candles, staring down at our photo on the poster before he continued. “I wasn’t surprised that the others never came. It’s not their time yet, so they’re not ready. They’re all too steeped into the real world to handle interacting with another one. But you, Narai, have one foot in that world and one foot in this one. That’s why you keep coming back here.” “So you want me to have both feet in yours instead?” I looked at him like he was being as ridiculous as he sounded. “I want you to have peace.” He turned around to face me and I stood up, still wanting to keep a safe distance. “So that’s what it’s like here? Peaceful?” “You know what it’s like,” Zaire said. “You created it.” The irony in this pushed me to silence. This room had only ever been a site of my suffering. But I could vaguely remember what I knew he was referring to: all the things we talked about that day in his basement, all the sights and sounds and feels of our projected utopia. None of us got a chance to experience any of that, save for the one person who was taken away from us. It seemed, somehow, that he’d been having a better time than we were, and I didn’t know how to feel about that. “What did you mean by that, Zaire?” “What?” 146

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“When you said you love me more than I ever knew,” I said. My mouth was still open and I drew a deep breath in, and then pushed the question out with the air. “How much do you love me?” He only blinked at me at first. Standing near but far, looking into me but through me, present but not really. Then a smile landed softly onto his face like a feather; a smile so breathtaking that I forgot the question in my mind about whether he was ‘real.’ Nothing I’d experienced in my whole life felt realer than what happened next. “Let me show you.” Zaire and I stepped into each other and collided. Fireworks popped from our lips as we kissed and flew up to the ceiling, blowing through the roof of the shed. The floor shook beneath our feet like they contained little earthquakes. The candles fell one-by-one, each sending the shed into a bigger and brighter blaze. Zaire pulled me in closer, his arms anchoring me in place as bombs burst around us, and it was then I knew that I could stand in the center of a tornado as long as he was there to keep me grounded. So we kissed, and everything around us exploded, and I was not afraid. When I opened my eyes again, Zaire was gone. The shed was still standing unscathed. I spun around and around looking for him, growing afraid of the bottomless sorrow I would fall into if everything I just experienced had truly been produced by my imagination.

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“Zaire? Zaire, are you here?” Nothing. I spun again, facing the poster and candles, where ten flames were still burning. “Am I here? Did it work?” I was becoming painfully aware of my sole presence in the space and it made me want to leave. I leaned down and blew out each of the ten candles, watching the glimmer disappear as the last one went out. Taking one last long look at the photo that I wished I could live inside of forever, I turned around. There he was. “Are you happy?” Just seconds ago, my answer, the feeling inside of me, would’ve been different. But seeing Zaire in his flesh and glory and feeling a new sense of weightlessness in my own body, I knew that I meant it with every fiber of my being: “Yes.” We smiled at each other. “Then, yeah. It worked.” I spun around the room again, looking for differences or clues or glowing sparkles. I couldn’t find any external evidence that something was different, but I felt it within me. Something was different about my insides—they didn’t contain anything new, but they’d let go of something that was there before and let the fire turn it to dust. My feet were planted on the floor, but there was no gravity here. “What is this place?” 148

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If Zaire was an angel here then I was no different; and yet, standing there in the window’s light, he appeared to possess a beauty so palpable that it could only come from a world foreign to my own. When he smiled at me I felt the warmth of a smaller sun. “A better one.”

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forty-nine if i could create heaven you would be in it i’d bring peace to your every ache and make your every plate taste like home i’d be a gardener to your mind pull the sun closer just so your flowers could grow in my heaven you’re free enough to fly with wings made of water enough to pirouette across the sea i would make heaven a place where you don’t need dreams where your wants become possessions too quickly for your faith to ever falter in my heaven i'd make you a little sweeter take you to my grandmother since you never got to meet her bring offerings to her feet because the woman was a seer you can find in my eyes what she gave to the skies i'm guided by what she beheld i’m haunted by what she gave to disguise sacrifices she could never tell if i could create heaven everything yours would stay yours loss would be a stranger your arms too short to carry all that you’ve gained but if you wanted i would stretch your limbs longer than roots run deep pull you from one end of the universe to another until you could hold even that in the palm of your hand and we could build another heaven if you ever got bored 151

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a place with no danger and sow good seed wherever we land if i could be an architect of the divine i would share my gifts so they could be yours show you every step i take so no matter where i am or where you go your life would be paradise forevermore love is the power to create.

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i promise i want to try less exert less force i want to try harder i should be doing more i could be doing more i’ve made my potential a prison i’m running out of time the clock stays hidden i keep trying to guess my destiny keep landing my feet in the wrong places i’m afraid i’d crumble in a dark room sometimes i can’t take this sometimes i want to be a tree standing immovably firm i know it’s a fear of floating into lessons i don’t want to learn i can’t spend forever postponing them for later there’s a person inside me waiting to escape it’s her i can’t seem to send back to her maker so i fight our battles and endure our rage i’m scared i’ll do something drastic for my creator’s attention if he keeps ignoring my cries i want the hostage inside me freed i want at last for her power to rise lately though it feels like i’ve been doing well last time i grabbed hold of that and then the ceiling fell i raised my arms in the air and clawed for what i couldn’t see but these skies don’t bleed from the scrapes i leave 154

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i tried going below to find peace in the under but the girl inside said i wouldn’t find it til i confront her this time i won’t fear the mirror i’ll try to be i will be clearer about the girl inside and if she’ll destroy or create i’ve gone back and forth in a constant rotation i was waiting for someone to come and give her a new fate last time i had no patience this time i’m making friends with my mind cultivating a fertile space i will leave something in the soil for her to find and from it she will grow the universe she promised in its place i’ll write a diary of the seed and some day long after it blooms beyond what me and her imagined i’ll share all our stories with the one that comes from me.

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