her favorite song was stay by little big town
maybe she forgot but i never would i never will
because the heart knows what it knows
and love never fails
and i ran away and i didn't stay
i couldn’t stay this plot did not include me
i needed an escape to remove myself to r —

playing it on replay and replay and replay
shawty had that melody in her head
never allowing it to leave
never allowing me to leave

one day i grow up
i no longer wish to stay
just a little bit longer
i do not care if…

Nestled along the eastern corridor of Pennsylvania are some of the finest colleges and universities in all of America: Lafayette, Villanova, Penn, and Lehigh. The latter is where I attend my first leadership conference as a junior in high school the very same day as the winter dance. A lifetime mentor of mine, Mr. Jo-Jo Herndon, invites me to the workshop as he is set to deliver his own workshop, which I myself would go on to do at colleges all across America.

The highlight for me on this day at Lehigh is the workshop with John Annoni, author of…

They keep taking me to these dang English lessons
These speech therapy lessons
These uncomfortable lessons

This instructor

she doesn’t look like me
she doesn’t think like me
she doesn’t talk like me
I don’t talk

But I think
And I write
And I can talk
I just choose not to talk around those I don’t trust
And she didn’t earn my trust
I’m like the Duke of Hastings from Bridgerton
We share such odd traits with each other
No native language
Yet our English teachers always quick to hype us up
We can trust them because they know how to teach…

Sherrilyn Ifill, author of a book on the legacy of lynching, reminds us that the lynchings of African Americans in the United States were often carried out in the public square, with hundreds and sometimes thousands of people watching. Surely not all of these observers were celebrating. Some were likely horrified, but very few tried to intervene. –– Catherine A. Sanderson & Harvard, Why We Act

Three buttons. Beep beep beep. The first time I ever hear the telephone ring to the tune of 911 I am a preschool student peaking my face beneath the curtains in Reading, Pennsylvania’s Farming…

Now those memories come back to haunt me — they haunt me like a curse

Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true — or is it something worse?

November was always a special time of the year in the Davis family household. Mother’s birthday had just passed, father’s family would be coming into town for Thanksgiving. That succulent Virginia aroma filled our house for days as our parents worked together to put together a meal all could enjoy. Juicy turkey split between light and dark, cranberries, stuffing, and gravy; all ingredients that would be placed onto rolls…