Author: Briquelle

Goals

Kai drove into town mind running, fueled by one statement and question, “You guys were goals! What happened?” They really were. She loved that man like her life and salvation were dependent on it. As a devout Christian, and a child of divorce she would never separate her family, and she would never make her children face the pain and instability of a broken home. The home her and Jeremy created in their twenties slowly began to crumble but from the inside. The facade remained in tack but as if termites ate away at the scaffolds of her mental health and the splinter in her eye was perceived by Jeremy as a beam. Somehow the emotional abuse she’d faced behind the closed door of their bedroom crept down the hall morphing into a monster she could not reason with.

It was by God’s grace that she had birthed two children and for Kai, they were the sun and moon. The days and nights spent alone caring for her family were illuminated by the lives of Damascus and Taliah. Yet they also slowly revealed the other side of Jeremy. And when she knew better, Kai resolved to do better. Even if it meant abandoning the god she worshipped all her life.

Safe

Bunny opened her eyes. Safe. Her own voice spoke almost audibly in her mind without even thinking a thought. As she creaked out of bed that squeaky old bed, and shuffled for her flip flops, she told herself over and over that she was safe. Finally.

Sway

He was originally from New Oleanes, and not long after Katrina, Sway found his way to Carter G. Woodson High School her senior year by way of Houston. Sway was a 90s kind of fine, with Nelly’s swagger and a Houston drawl that would knock any girl’s panties straight off. They shared a love for music and Bunny felt akin to an anthropologist when he played 50 Cents Wankster screwed and chopped on a burned CD in her bedrooms boom box.

He tanned a reddish brown like her, but something about him gave Indigenous North American, maybe even Indian. Slim and a tad lanky, Sway always smelled so good and greeted her with his biggest grin. She’d asked him to prom after the guy Bunny had been talking to ghosted her. They would go as friends and would commit to at least taking pictures together. And took pictures they did, despite Bunny’s teammate high jacking the night with a promise and booked hotel room. Splitting her prom date senior year and suffering from instant diarrhea from drinking a daiquiri she’d been handed a the Prom entrance was born in her plan.

Big Red

It wasn’t until his funeral that it was said aloud, actually written in the obituary, Uncle Red was Autistic. It’s funny how Black folk had a silent understanding that neurodivergence was seen, protected, yet not openly acknowledged. Perhaps Bunny became an educator with a heart for students who were equally as genius and divergent. Or maybe she was led to a graduate degree with English learner certifications because she sat at dinner tables listening to Arabic, on the porch in Glendale with Armenian and Tupac bumping in the background, on the coach of immigrants from Mexico who taught her some of her first preschool words in Spanish. It’s funny how fate weaves such a complex web throughout space and time. Bunny only wondered where this new adventure would bring her next. Why did she have to say goodbye in order to welcome in a new beginning?