Write something bright for those who experience a thousand deaths each day.
Write some smiles for those whose pillows are moist with tears each night.
Write a few pure moments of love for those who could never call anyone their own.
Write a few droplets of soothing dew on their lips.
Write true happiness in their pounding hearts.
Write the fulfillment of unrealized dreams in their eyes.
Write floral bracelets of joy for their soft hands.
Write swinging earrings of solace for their ears.
Even if you write nothing else, dear Lord,
You must write freedom for them.
Photo descriptions: Top, a young woman with light skin and dark hair reading books and handing pages of paper to girls in headscarves. Bottom, young woman in a black dress standing in front of a leafy tree.
Anila Bukhari, a remarkable young girl with a heart as kind as the sunflower fields of her childhood in Pakistan. Growing up in a village, she was surrounded by the beauty of nature and the wisdom of her grandmother, who shared tales that shaped Anila’s compassionate spirit. When her grandmother passed away when Anila was just 12, she found solace in writing poetry, a way to keep her beloved granny’s spirit alive.
Through perseverance and dedication, Anila’s poetic voice resonated far beyond the borders of her village. By the age of 17, she became a published author, using her words to advocate for the voiceless in society. Anila’s compassion knew no bounds as she conducted poetry workshops for refugees and orphans in Uganda, Africa, and Bangladesh, spreading hope and healing through her verses.
Anila’s passion for education and empowerment led her to establish Girls’ Education Awareness Day in numerous countries worldwide, impacting the lives of countless young girls. Her efforts were recognized globally, earning her prestigious awards for her advocacy and humanitarian work. Anila Bukhari’s journey is a testament to the power of kindness, resilience, and the transformative impact of a single voice raised for those in need.
She stares at me. Me on my knees in the muggy, warm grass of summer. She stares at me and I wave at her. The friendly wave of a child who has no boundaries to making friends with strangers. The wave of a child who has not yet felt the societal pressures of fitting in or fitting out. One who has no style, nothing to conform to, nothing to conform against.
She stands still, quiet, hands dropped to her side like she’s forgotten about them. A light cloud of gnats flies between us and she blinks. I voice a greeting to her in my child voice. I speak to her my name and ask her hers. She comes over and kneels. Her pale knees touch the same patch of grass that mine have settled in, creating similar dents in the moist earth beneath us.
Two pairs of knees kneeling in my front yard next to my myriad of items. I see her curious look at them spread out before us. My specimens. My curiosity collection. Jars full of curious things for a curious child in a world where there are no more mysteries. I want to open them one by one. I hesitate over what to show her first. Which curiosity to share with her. To find out what this newcomer into my world is prepared to experience.
I choose a jar I know well, with what I consider a secret inside. The tips of my thumb and finger gently pluck the curiosity from its jar. My fingers are clean despite my afternoon outside as I’ve been licking them when they become dirty, to avoid getting any smudges on my items and ruining the purity they hold for me. My fingers are adept and handle this curiosity gently. A smooth dark onyx eye polished and round with a white iris, lidless and unblinking. She looks over it, leaning in slightly, then holds out her hand, palm-lines tinged with dirt. I gingerly placed my curiosity into her hand. Into her unclean palm with grit and grime. I accept this with her, that she is unclean, and some of her uncleanness may transfer to my stone and stay behind when she is gone. I felt calm inside at the thought of this. I could see the want in her eyes. Children and adults are both the same in this respect, it is very difficult for them to hide the hunger of wanting from their eyes. I told her it was hers to keep. I knew this meant I would not keep a piece of her when she goes, but I wanted her for more than just a moment. I told her this made us friends now, bonding us in a moment of unselfishness. Of creative and spontaneous gift giving with the un-worry of the value of what is being given that adults lack the grace of.
I was being called inside to return indoors. The voice of my parent sliding across the humidity of the grass to find me. I closed my jar no longer holding its curiosity. I carefully gathered them together using my shirt as a makeshift basket. Their glass tinkling against one another with semi-hollow sounds, lids clacking dully together. I told her I would play with her later. In a flash, like an eel slipping through the cracks of an old weir in a lake, her mouth kissed mine in that innocent childish way. Thunder rolled through me for the first time in my life. I would not feel that way again for a very long time. In that moment I tasted dew and I tasted peanut butter. I’m allergic to peanuts.
*
College feels like every Lana Del Rey song played end to end filling up a bubble around you until it bursts. Everyone looks a little better, everyone smells a little better in their own way. They have grown into the limbs that they developed first before their minds expanded and started to provide them with new pathways for thinking and feeling. The focus of each body being sex, food, and future. With all being uncertainties during this time. Minds have us convinced we know who we are and who we are going to be and for many of us, what we are going to do.
I wander listlessly across campus most days, I don’t have a full day of classes like most students. I look like I don’t belong if I am not hustling across pavement focused on not being late. I have time to feel the sun on my skin and feel it warming my dark hair. I have time to notice the different smells of the trees and bushes in the days after it rains. My languid ways attract the eyes of the others who should be too busy to notice other than the fact I stand out by not being in the same mode as they are.
Since I got here I have been looking for one person in particular, someone I hadn’t seen in half a lifetime. For someone in college that isn’t that long, and it is. She and I would play together as much as we could after school and on the weekends. When our families would release us from chores as we got older, we would rush to meet. When we would release ourselves from our friends and after school activities, we would always find one another. Then as we grew older, when we could find time, we would phone. Finally, when we would remember, we would text.
When you are older, even when you are still young but older, you look back and cannot understand how you let important things slip away, or had ideas that contradicted who you are currently. You don’t recognize the self that you were as you are now so markedly changed. It feels as though a haze has settled over the time period of the past, of being a child, a teen. How you could let someone so close to you get so far away, you have no idea.
She moved. Because I was absorbed in a world of my own emotion, fantasy, drama, and creation, I let it happen without so much as a tether to her. When I realized this I felt hurt that she never threw out a line to me either. We had both become something we never thought could be possible: just childhood friends. Someone to use up and forget once you built a world for yourself with new faces, tastes, styles, and adventures. I step by person after person. Face after face, always checking, always scanning their eyes swiftly, even the guys. You never know. I’d love her even if she was he now.
What will I do when I see those brown eyes as dark as my own? Will the air become stifling, too thick to breathe? Will I wilt like flower petals in the heat? I imagine myself evaporating and hanging before her like a clouded mist. When I open my eyes I realize I have lingered too long and am alone. Better to be alone now when I am in my head, when I am imagining her in my mind. I tried to detail my first meeting with her to a guy I once loved. He didn’t understand the attachment to words I have. He didn’t understand how I described her to him. The emotions that dripped from me when I spoke them to him never penetrated his being. I closed my eyes one more time to imagine her as she was when I last recalled seeing her.
She stood so close to me on my birthday. As children we had started having it as “our” birthday, being that we were born close to the same day, while only a year apart in age. We would call ourselves “The Twins”, as in the twins of Gemini. This birthday was my birthday. Our first birthday that was just my own since I had met her. We had started the process of being two people again after so long being one in our childhood. I wanted to be me. Solid. Individual. With my other friends around me. The secrets of her being were something only I knew and only she knew mine.
She was there because I was there. I wanted to have this ritual of life with her, puberty, growing, showing, changing. I wanted her there but I did not see what I was doing to push her away. The first lips to touch mine. The first to know my mind, the only one to ever see what I truly held dear in jars I kept hidden away. It was the last time I really saw her, and the first time I really let her go.
I open my eyes to the startling sunlight and let my vision adjust. In the straining blur I see a figure, standing alone. We are standing alone together, out here among no one. Ready to gather our will and make introductions if we must. I blink back a few tears that have welled up in the dome of my eyes and look again. This hazy outline has solidified into a person. Her. The features are stretched softly, more angular as time has carved them from the soft clay of childhood. Eyes still dark and as brewing as mine. She holds up a hand, a greeting. No, not just a hand, not just a greeting. Between her thumb and finger I can see she is holding something. She rocks it slowly in her fingers, held up in the sun. I can finally see what it is in between her fingers with the sun striking the deep onyx color. A stone polished to a gleaming shine with a white iris looking back at me.
*
Under the shade of a tree that I don’t know the name of we sit. Knees bent in the grass with our legs together pressing down a patch of green blades beneath us, creating a dent in the earth that is our own.
Quinn is a writer from sunny Phoenix, Arizona who is living and writing in drizzly Portland, Oregon. Her education and career are in behavioral health. She’s published short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in various publications including Dark Sire Literary Magazine, Literally Stories, Friday Flash Fiction, Everyday Fiction, South Broadway Ghost Society, and Rigorous Magazine. She was chosen for the 2024 SSWA x Thumbprint Gallery: A Thousand Words exhibit for her story “The Humid Hours”. She often spends time hanging out with her stinky little dogs Olive and Charlifer, watching movies, and playing video games.
DEWING FLOWERS
Flowers are symbols of joy?
Do not think so
Flowers are embers of decay that accompanies the remnant of one cherished to the hugs of that grave
Tears are parodies of dews on blooms
Flowers are casings for a bride with no adoration for the partner down the aisle
Corollas of sadness past
Carpels of pains present
Calyxes of despair to come
Do not mind the petals beauty
Doom is spelled either way
Three decades had passed since David last entered the Empress Diner. During those years, when David returned to Brooklyn, it was to see his parents and they always preferred to eat at home.
David preferred diners and the Empress had been a favorite growing up. Restaurants were for occasions. Weddings, anniversaries, divorces, birthdays, deaths, engagements, breakups, graduations, promotions. Diners were the everyday. Everyone from everywhere eating together. They were for people with places to go and those with nowhere to be. Diners were a respite from the harsh world. Even if you sat alone.
Which was what David was doing in a booth, by himself, with two plates of pie, one apple, one blueberry, and a cup of coffee. He removed a tiny candle from his jacket pocket and pushed it into the slice of blueberry pie.
“That’s just sad,” a woman said, taking of her sunglasses.
David looked up as his memory searched for a name to match a vaguely familiar face.
“Hi, David,” she said.
“Michelle?”
“You got there.” Michelle said.
“It’s been a long time,” David said. “And I don’t get back here often.”
“Back from where?” Michelle asked. In high school, David sat next to Michelle in trig and calculus.
“Santa Monica.”
“And you made the trip to celebrate your birthday alone at the Empress with not one but two slices of pie?” Michelle said. “Pie? Not cake?”
“I don’t like cake.”
“Okay.”
“And it’s not my birthday,” David said.
“So you always light a candle when you eat pie?”
“I haven’t lit it yet.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” Michelle said as she sat down across from David.
David lit the candle.
“Do we blow it out?” she asked.
“We leave it alone,” David said. “We don’t eat the pie.”
The waitress came over and Michele ordered a grilled cheese and fries. “We sat next to each other for two years and you barely talked to me.”
“High school was not fun for everyone,” David said.
“You and your friends seemed to have a lot of fun. You were always laughing and joking about something. What was your thing back then? You were always carrying around a book.”
“I was into Jack Kerouac,” David said. “On the Road was my Bible.”
“I was a Deadhead,” Michelle said.
“Let’s not do that whole reminiscing, glory days thing,” David said. “It’s like looking for ghosts.”
“Ghosts are real,” Michelle said. “What brings you back home?”
“My mom died.”
“I’m so sorry.”
David took a bite of apple pie.
“How’s your dad?” Michelle asked.
“He died three years ago.”
“Are you having a service for your mom?” The waitress brought Michelle’s food and refilled their coffee.
“Two days ago,” David said. “I’m in the sorting and tossing phase so I can sell the house.”
“Is that hard? Both my parents are still living.”
“It’s quite weird. There’s a lot of stuff,” David said.
“And a lot of memories?”
“Memories are always there. I don’t get attached to things. Things don’t care. I just have to find places that will take the stuff.”
“So, you’ll be around for a while?”
“There’s a LOT of stuff.”
“Is the candle for your mom?” The candle had burned its way down to the crust where the flame went out.
“You ask a lot of questions,” David said.
“It’s really not your birthday?”
“My sister’s.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” David said.
“Didn’t your sister die when we were in high school?”
“If you remember that, then you remember Emma killed herself,” David said.
“I do. I remember trying to get you to talk to me about it and you became even more distant. Which I had not thought possible.”
“I was told I did not take her death well.”
“Why would you?” Michelle said. “Why should you?”
“There were those who insisted I should.”
“Who?”
“School psychologist for one,” David said. “She talked my parents into sending me to shrink. I didn’t want to add to my parents’ grief, so I agreed. But I insisted on seeing someone in Manhattan. I wanted to be sure I wouldn’t run into them here in Brooklyn.”
“Did it help? Did the therapy help?”
“It did not,” David said.
“Do you do this thing with the candle every year?”
“Is this an interview?”
“It’s how people get to know each other,” Michelle said.
“Is that what we’re doing?”
“Why didn’t it go well?” Michelle asked.
“Because he just sat there listening to me lie and never said a word.”
“Did you stop lying?”
“I stopped going,” David said.
“Were your parents upset?”
“I didn’t tell them,” David said. “They had enough to deal with. I took the cash they gave me every week and put it in the bank,” David said. “Your turn. What’s your story?” David said as he speared a piece of the apple pie.
“I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has one,” David said.
“I went to school in the city. Hunter College. Then NYU law. I’m a partner at a firm that does criminal law. I still live in Brooklyn. I’ve been divorced for six years. And I’ve been sober for five years and eleven months,” Michelle said.
“That last part. With the dates. There’s a story there.”
“Not an original one. More of a cliché,” she said.
“The pre sober part. I guess it didn’t stop you from making partner.”
“I hid it well,” Michelle said. “What did you do with the money?
“I used it to move to LA after high school,” David said.
“What did you do when you got there?”
“I was always using video cameras and making movies with my friends. Not a lot of people knew about video back then, so it was easy to get a job operating cameras.”
“Did you work in movies?” Michelle asked.
“At first. Then television and later sports. I worked for ABC Sports and traveled all over the world. I loved it. I worked nonstop for a long time and saved a lot of money and quit.”
“So, you’re happy,” Michelle said.
“That’s not something I worry about or think about.”
“You don’t?” Michelle said.
“I’d rather focus on things that interest me,” David said. “We’ve become so obsessed with happiness that we turned unhappiness into a fatal flaw, a character deficiency.”
“That’s crap,” Michelle said. “But you’ll tell me more tonight. And I’ll tell you why ghosts are real. And you’ll tell me about those things that interest you.”
“Tonight?” David said.
“Tonight.” Michelle stood. “I need to run but you should come out with me tonight. I have to go to a party for a colleague who just made partner at my firm. We’ll pass by and if you hate it and I’m sure you will hate it, I’ll take you to dinner.”
“I don’t see that happening.”
“You’ll have fun.” Michelle put ten dollars on the table. “I’ll meet you by the subway on Continental at 7:30. I think that after I leave, you’ll realize that I’m something that might interest you.” Michelle turned and left the diner.
Elan Barnehama is the author of two novels, Escape Route, and Finding Bluefield. Barnehama’s short fiction, personal narratives, and essays have appeared in ParisLitUp,10x10FlashFiction, BoogCity, JewishFiction, DrunkMonkeys, Entropy, RoughCutPress, BostonAccent, JewishWritingProject, RedFez, HuffPost, public radio, and elsewhere. A recent flash fiction was nominated for BEST OF THE NET 2024. At different times, Barnehama has worked with at-risk youth, was the flash fiction editor for Forth Magazine LA, had a gig as a radio news guy, and did a mediocre job as a short-order cook. More @ https://elanbarnehama.com
You were the first and I didn’t know what to expect
My mother had forbade me from SSRI’s
when I needed them the most
We had a good run for a few years
but then you took a turn
Left me a dizzy, dazzled mess
Couldn’t drive my car for more than a mile
without swinging open the door
to empty you and my lunch onto the side of the road
Sorry, but we needed to break up
Our relationship was no longer sustainable
I don’t want to ever see you
or the mess you make
ever again
Wellbutrin
I wish I could call you a fling
Truly I wish I’d never swallowed
My mind had never been in such a state
Let’s leave our memories in the past
and never speak of them again
Buspirone
I need you to know
We may have met at the wrong time
In another world maybe we’d be together still
Our short time that we shared
I can hardly remember it except that
It wasn’t you, it was me
Zoloft
We are still limping along together
but I am hoping to see less of you
We started off small
but swallowing 100mg of you
is simply too much
I can’t be the only one putting in the work between us
You make me feel like a shell of myself
I am stuck in neutral
There are no ups or downs
I can’t keep living like this
It’s taking everything inside me
to not throw you out the window
Boiling water
The thing about human minds
is they can make up things
without your permission
Years of craving control and stability
may look like getting a college degree
In spite of your own family
trying to drag you back to them
and all their codependent habits
Five years after you get that college degree
kicking and screaming
You’re still suffering
Your therapist has told you
your family is happy being miserable
and misery loves company
They have shown you they don’t want to change
Stop asking your mother to come see you
Stop calling your grandmother
if she keeps saying anytime is a bad time
You’re her only granddaughter
and she is angry that she has to turn down her television
to talk to you
That isn’t love
When are you going to learn
it isn’t in your best interest to interact with them
You are sticking your hand
in a boiling pot of water
Even if you pour some cold water into it
it’s still going to be a boiling pot of water
You’re still going to get burned
Diamonds & dust
When I asked
why we never wed
I remember you said
You couldn’t afford a ring
A ring?
Such a worthless thing
So I said to you
What is the difference
between diamonds and dust?
They start
with the same letter
and they
are ground dwellers
What is the difference
between diamonds and dust
when the finger
that wears the diamond
turns to dust?
Marissa LaPorte is a resident of Michigan; she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from Grand Valley State University. Marissa has also been published in Wingless Dreamer, The Fictional Café, Speculative 66, Sick Lit Magazine, The Drabble, The Flash Fiction Press, and more.
Little girls are born every day. Some are born into wealth and power, others into poverty and powerlessness. As they grow into women, a few of those born into poverty transcend the financial and social status of their families and better their condition. Others do not change and may even worsen their lot. Some are lucky to be born in a period of history when human enlightenment progresses at an astounding rate. Others are born when humanity seems to bury itself in the darkness of ignorance, violence, and intolerance. And for many, their period of history presents only ambiguities and contradictions. Those born in such times find confusion and pain as they navigate that landscape. They must rely upon their own innate intelligence and wit, the love of their families, true friends, and other people of good will, if such people exist in their lives, in order to find success and meaning.
The second half of the twentieth century was one of those ambiguous periods for African Americans – particularly the women. The civil rights movement promised them the right to vote, equal housing and accommodations, and attempted to improve their education through integration. The women’s movement promised parity with men of all races.
The African American women who believed in those promises and decided to work towards their fulfillment often achieved financial and social success. However, their victories often bore a high emotional price tag, triggered by often overt and even more insidious, subtle racism.
Into this fog of ambiguity and contradiction, in the geographical center of America during the year of 1947, Lauren Sullivan was born.
Chapter One
Participating in the Bold Experiment
Two big, brown eyes peered over the pink chenille spread. Then an entire face, revealing a big smile. After four seconds, the intensity of the smile dimmed and the eyebrows furrowed. For the first time in her eight-year life, Lauren was going to attend her neighborhood school, the one only the white children were allowed to attend – until today.
For a year, it had appeared to Lauren that the only topic the adults in her world discussed was racial integration of the public schools. She remembered hearing about some decision made in the U.S. Supreme Court, Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Her mother told Lauren that Topeka was only two hours’ drive from their town. Lauren would sit on the floor playing with her dolls while she overheard conversations about how the lives of Negroes would be affected by this event. Every adult said that integration was a very good thing and long overdue. It meant that Lauren could attend a much newer school with more books and supplies than her old school. But Lauren didn’t like the fear and powerlessness she heard in the grownups’ voices when they whispered about what the white teachers and students might do when the Negro teachers and students came to their schools.
“Lauren,” called her mother, “are you dressed yet?”
“Not yet, Mama; I can’t button my dress.”
Helen hurriedly entered Lauren’s bedroom, her facial expression anxious and distant. The school in which Helen taught, deep in the Negro section of town, was not going to be integrated this year. The school district had refused to send white students there. Helen buttoned her daughter’s brand new green and yellow plaid dress with its Peter Pan collar and wide skirt, and gave her a long stare. Lauren’s eyes were riveted on her mother. Her eyes were the first things one noticed about Lauren. They were huge relative to her small face – dark brown and clear – and they seemed to bore a hole through anyone looking at them. They reflected intelligence and wisdom older than her years. Their size was also a stark contrast to Lauren’s thin build. People often teased her by saying that a gust of wind would blow her away. Helen gave Lauren’s left cheek a spit bath. Lauren groaned, but did not dare move.
“You know, Lauren, you have a lot to look forward to this year,” Helen began, slowly and deliberately. “You will have a new school, new teachers, and new friends.”
“I liked my old school and friends, Mama. We didn’t even move, so why do I havta change schools? I finally got a teacher I liked – Mrs. Redding.”
As Lauren spoke, she could smell the scent of Tabu, her mother’s signature fragrance, permeating the air. She loved that scent. Although it was strong, it made her feel secure because as long as she could remember, her mother had worn it. It evoked thoughts of visits to the zoo, birthday parties, and church. Its fragrance also evoked in Lauren a feeling of romantic adventures yet to come because of the magazine ads she had seen. In one, a man with a violin was grabbing his female pianist in a passionate embrace. Lauren needed that sense of security and adventure today.
The adults were attempting to paint a rosy picture of Lauren’s new school. But she had misgivings. She’d overheard too many other whispered conversations.
“Lauren,” Helen said impatiently. “you know there is a new law that requires the schools to integrate. That means you have to attend the school in your neighborhood – in other words, you have to go to Garfield Elementary.” Lauren hated it when her mother didn’t explain the “whys” of things. She felt insulted and trapped.
“I heard you, Uncle Warren, and Aunt Eleanor say that the white teachers wouldn’t care much about us Negro kids and wouldn’t teach us anything. You said the white teachers really weren’t as smart as Negro teachers, Mama.”
“First of all, Lauren,” Helen snapped, “you were not a party to those conversations. Therefore, they are none of your business. Second, that’s not what we said. We just observed that as of today – 1955 – educated Negroes such as your uncle, aunt, and myself, don’t have much of a choice of careers. Most of us teach or end up in the post office. Only those Negroes who came from a little money can attend the professional schools at Negro colleges and become doctors, dentists, and lawyers. Even those with advanced degrees, they are only allowed to serve the Negro community. Educated white people can do anything that they have the ambition to do. They can have careers that pay far more than teaching and working within the Negro community. Many of those whites who end up teaching are those without the ambition or skills to do anything else.”
“Well, if my old teachers were better, why do I havta go to Garfield? Danny doesn’t want to go there either.” Danny, Lauren’s five-year-old brother, was beginning kindergarten at Garfield.
“It’s out of our hands, Lauren. You are going, and that’s that.”
Chapter Two
The Black Swan
The sun was casting its hot rays upon the storefront windows as Lauren stared absent-mindedly out the window of the trolley bus. Her mother’s tan Samsonite cosmetic case lay in her lap, filled with her leotard, tights, ballet slippers, and a change of underwear. Although the temperature had surged to 97 degrees, Lauren felt comfortable in her shorts and halter top. She liked to watch her tan skin become darker on her arms and stomach each Saturday, as she traveled to dancing school during the summer of her tenth year. She would travel alone for an hour, changing buses twice. On the way home, she would also stop at Zesty Creme for a large vanilla ice cream cone dipped in chocolate. The bus drivers also treated her as if she were a grown-up.
The ballet teacher, Devon Martin, was a thirty-nine year old white woman who had studied briefly in Paris and New York. After teaching technique at the Kansas City Conservatory of the Arts, she’d opened her own studio in a fashionable white section of the city. Devon was strict with her students, some of whom had actually gone on to New York for ballet careers.
Lauren took two one-hour classes each Saturday. The first at 11am stressed technique and barre work. The second, which began at 1pm, focused upon excerpts from classical ballets. Between classes, the students ate lunch at the restaurant a half block from the dance studio.
As she entered the studio, Lauren immediately noticed the smells of sweat and powdered resin, the substance that the budding ballerinas placed on the toes and soles of their ballet shoes to prevent slipping on the hardwood floors. These were smells to which Lauren had long become accustomed since beginning ballet lessons four years ago. This sweaty smell was distinguishable from the one Lauren experienced on the playground or in her own home. It was formed by the body chemistry of white people, and had as its elements the diet they enjoyed, mixed with their colognes and talcum powders. Lauren walked into the dressing room. Here, everyone wore the same uniform: black leotards, pink tights, and black ballet slippers. The girls who were older and more advanced wore pink toe shoes. Lauren could hardly wait until she would be able to wear toe shoes, after, as Miss Devon Martin had said, her legs had developed a bit longer.
Devon Martin demanded superlative performances from all her students. She had often told Lauren privately that excellence was “the great equalizer.” Lauren wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but she knew that when she was in ballet class, she transformed into a beautiful graceful fairy princess. The most slender student in the class, she was also the second youngest. Therefore, in addition to working hard to meet Devon’s high standards, she had to perform as well as girls one to five years older, who had better developed muscles. Lauren did not mind the challenge.
The three hours per week she spent here allowed her to fantasize about worlds much more glamorous than the mundane scene of the Kansas and Missouri flatlands and the lifestyle of her family. She dreamed of going to Paris and New York, becoming a prima ballerina. Why, the dance movements even had French names that flowed gracefully from Miss Martin’s tongue. The rhythmic tapping of Miss Martin’s baton on the hardwood floor was blended with the classical music Mrs. Landon played on the piano.
The teacher stared at her pupil for a few seconds. Then she slowly started speaking.
“You are going to be a remarkable woman, Lauren. I hope you will study ballet diligently because I feel you truly have some talent.”
Lauren was shocked to hear these words from this woman. She loved ballet, but didn’t believe she had any unusual talent.
“You are very thin, which is good for a ballerina. You could have a career in ballet.” Lauren involuntarily started to smile.
“You will, however, always have unique challenges because of your beautiful brown skin, Lauren. That, however, is no reason to shrink away or attempt to be unobtrusive. Wear that skin, as well as your whole being, regally and proudly, my dear. You owe no one any excuses for being who you are. If you run into people who lack character – and you certainly will – look straight into their eyes and show them that you are a woman to be reckoned with. However, to pull it off, you must always be far better at whatever you do than anyone else. Do you understand, my dear?”
“Yes, Miss Martin,” said Lauren. She had never been spoken to this way by a white person. “Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome, my dear,” smiled Devon. “Now hurry home. You have quite a way to go.”
“G’bye, Miss Martin.” Lauren went to the dressing room, picked up her overnight case, and headed for the bus stop. She felt a heady euphoria that she had never before experienced. Her mind raced into the future. Lauren suddenly saw herself in Paris, dancing on the stage of the Paris Opera, a place that Devon had described to the class several times. For the first time, Lauren saw herself as the beautiful, graceful adult that Devon had described.
Lauren’s daydream continued without limit until the loud bellow of the bus’ exhaust awakened her. As she ascended the steps into the vehicle, she recognized the bus driver as the same bald, little white man who always drove this bus every Saturday. He had been solicitous of her in the past because, as he told her several times, he thought she was young to be on a bus so far from the Negro section of town. Sometimes, he allowed Lauren to ride for free.
“Hi, little lady,” the driver said again for the hundredth time. Lauren dropped her dime into the slot and took a seat behind the drive. “Little lady, where do you go every Saturday? Do they make you clean the whole house?” Lauren was puzzled at first by his question. But then she realized that the driver thought she was a miniature version of the day workers, who climbed on his bus at the end of the day, heading back toward the Negro section of town.
“Oh, I don’t work in anybody’s house, sir,” stated Lauren, innocently. “I go to dancing school. I’m going to become a great ballerina someday,” she said, proudly. The bus advanced a few blocks before the driver said anything else. Then, seemingly out of the blue, he began talking.
“So you go to ballet school, do you? In this white neighborhood? That’s real highfalutin’. Well, didn’t you know that ballerinas have to pay thirty rather than ten cents to ride a bus?”
“No, sir,” said Lauren, with genuine surprise.
“You bet, little ballerina girl. So from now on, when you get on the bus, make sure you have your thirty cents ready.” Although the driver wasn’t speaking in a threatening tone, Lauren recognized his hostility. She didn’t understand exactly what she had done to offend him; but she calmly rose and dropped the additional two dimes in the meter – dimes she had planned to spend on her weekly ice cream cone. As Miss Martin had instructed her, she walked regally to the meter and back to her seat without uttering a word. The driver had a look of vindication on his face; Lauren didn’t even notice. She felt graceful, intelligent, and beautiful, in spite of that mean old driver.
Merge Within
With no ground of distrust,
No agony within,
Without worry of separation,
Like autumn leaves
Falling with no care,
Meeting the earth
And merging with it.
In the same way,
Come with deep desire.
Sometimes, you bury your face in my arms,
Seeking comfort and solace.
Sometimes, I nestle my face in yours,
Finding serenity in your embrace.
At times, you somersault
Like a playful dolphin on my lap,
Seeking joy and laughter.
And sometimes, I too somersault,
Offering you happiness and delight
From dawn until night.
[Sushant Kumar B.K. is a Nepali poet, translator, educator, and freelance writer from Gulariya, Bardiya, Nepal. He holds two degrees: an MA in English Literature and Political Science. He primarily writes poems in English and Nepali. His poems have been featured in national and international anthologies, magazines, newspapers, and online portals. He can be reached at sushantacademia@gmail.com.".]
