
Elena Martinez counted the ten-dollar bills each evening the way some people counted down to freedom. Not because she needed…




The morning Tom decided to erase Joy, the sun came up politely, as if it hadn’t heard the plan. Light…

Nia Sterling woke up the next morning with the kind of clarity that doesn’t feel peaceful, because it comes carrying…

The muddy water hit Olivia like a breaking wave. Not the gentle splash of an accident. Not the careless spray…

The pen sounded louder than it should have. A soft scratch on paper, the kind of sound you’d miss in…

Morning fog sat low over the Yazoo Delta like a damp quilt thrown across the fields, muffling the world and…

The July sun sat over the Mississippi hills like a hot coin pressed to skin. By dawn, the air was…

The rain didn’t visit Whitfield Plantation often in late summer, but the air still felt wet, like the land sweated…


The day I turned eighteen, the world handed me a black trash bag and called it freedom. It was March…


March 17th, 2024, Boston General Hospital smelled like hand sanitizer and wet wool. Outside, the city was doing its early-spring…

The Louisiana night didn’t fall so much as it settled, thick and deliberate, like wet velvet pressed over the land….

My daughter stood before the crowded dining table, a shimmering anomaly in a room suffocated by beige propriety. She was…

Ten-year-old Maggie Harper stopped feeling her feet sometime after the creek crossing, when the ice bit through her skin like…

This is a chronicle of a coup d’état, though not one involving armies or gilded thrones. It is the record…

The corset of my wedding dress was not just a garment; it was a cage of French lace and boning,…