Assessing Your Peace Portfolio: Be Kind to Unkind People

Before you jump down my throat hear me out. I’ve been scorned way too many times for me to still be a professional optimist and I know this and don’t understand this. It’s not going to make me less chipper though. It will make me wiser. As the only girl amongst my mom’s two boys…

Empathy, Toxic Ships, and How America Creates its Own Villains

“Sometimes you gotta care for the Cain and sometimes you gotta care for the Abel.” Justdae One morning I woke up and that’s the only line I remembered from a dream and I woke up and jotted it down to dissect later. Growing up my mom didn’t force any kind of religion on us as…

The A Word

I am an awkward black girl and I don’t apologize for it. My heart races every time I speak in public. I have to stop myself from trying to appease everyone and I have routines that I hate to break but sometimes have to and it frustrates me. “You’re not awkward if you’re self-aware.” I’ve…

Your Misogyny is Showing

Aye! I loved the video for Cardi B and Meg thee Stallion’s “WAP.” The song isn’t my cup of tea but I applaud these young women for taking control of their own sexuality in and industry that over-sexualizes and demeans women on so many levels. In high school I did my senior project on how…

Hunger for Words: Thank Your Local Library

I am forever grateful for my local library as it is/was the pinnacle of the neighborhood. I took journeys near and far thanks to the knowledge planted, watered, and harvested. My mom worked so at one point I was a latch key kid. I enjoyed the free meals the library provided, fostered friendships, and before…

It’s Okay to Repair Your Own Boat

Being selfish vs selfless; you have to draw a line or you will drown trying. For the last two-ish years, I’ve been on a super self-aware journey. Being a writer forces me to embrace that I’m goofy, it’s a personality trait but also it forces me to be real with myself. When I write reality…

American Hurt Reflects on America’s Faults

It’s not our fault America is the way that it is but at some point we must have the strength to look at ourselves and acknowledge our past so we can fix the present and future. What’s American Hurt about? It’s not an anti-American poetry book but it’s a look in the mirror. It’s me…

Return to Sender and Why Breakups Aren’t Failures

I self-published Return to Sender October 2018, but the book took a few years of collecting and reflecting the emotions from my first serious relationship. It follows me and at my most vulnerable points. There was purpose in the organization of the poems as the book reads like a story. It starts in the heat…

Inflight Entertainment: I Was a Flight Attendant

“I’ve never been to Texas. I hear they have good food.” It didn’t take much to talk myself into interviewing for a flight attendant job. It was the year 2013 and after getting laid off from my first full-time job and finishing an AmeriCorps term, it was time for next big adventure. Once I found…

Timeless: For My Pappy’s Birthday

Staring at him laying in the hospital bed that the nurse had set up began this emptiness in my stomach that I knew would not be temporary. I thought about how he was battling cancer and pneumonia and the doctors sent him home saying there was nothing else they could do for him.  I thought…