The man her mother trusted. The man who smiled too wide and stared too long. The man who whispered threats like lullabies after her mother fell asleep. It started with small things. A brush against her arm. A hand that lingered too long on her lower back. The way he’d corner her in the hallway. The way she never felt safe closing her eyes. She tried to tell her mother once. Just once. But her mother looked at her like she was the one who ruined the house. The one who invit

“I’m not saying what happened was okay. Nothing about that was okay. But I believe God can redeem anything—even this. Even something this dark.” Nea’s face hardened. “Then let him carry it. Let him wake up every day with something inside of him that feels like a monster clawing out of his womb. You want me to see him in the face of a baby every day? You think God’s gonna fix that?” “I don’t know,” Breniya whispered.

But that night… everything split. They’d been fighting loudly, ugly, the kind of argument that had built up for weeks. Nea had been in the kitchen, shouting at her, her voice breaking with frustration, with rage Alexis had never seen before. And then… Nea grabbed the knife. A kitchen knife. The air went still. Alexis had frozen in place, staring at her sister like she didn’t even recognize her anymore. Nea wasn’t thinking. Acting on emotion, adrenaline, and anger. She swung

Abandonment I waited in the hue of artificial lights wrapped in soft spoken lies of cotton sales and unspoken tensions. steering through the seams of promises Time dripped from my wrist while your lips lingered on a strangers hands tracing lines of betrayal in slow motion. She wore your name like perfume. Your name on me felt like bruises but yet I walked toward you, in the wounds that left me abandoned.

The reflection staring back at her was almost unrecognizable. Her honey-brown eyes, usually wide and expressive, shifting from golden to am

When I was a child, I looked into my father’s eyes finding terror where love usually abides. love between mother and her child, teaching unselfish caring for one more than self- sustaining endurance, through disobedience at times trying to fit into a mold, not meant for a child of heritage foretold

Penetration Internally united in one flawless motion, ecstasy in which I become enslaved to the idea that I need you. Manipulate my mind to the point that I can’t find myself, alone, only you are my home, so use me as a way to make me feel brave enough to sell out the rest of my dreams, to give you my future, suffocate my independent thinking so that I’d rather be responsible for your happiness I feel enraged, but I can’t escape the need to feel you internally, so I plead,