Writing and ballroom have become two partners in my own dance of being alive. They challenge me to constantly practice attentiveness to the world, keeping my body and mind aware and moving as intimate partners that cannot perform without the other.
Gaudy and impudent, y’all is Southern culture’s linguistic centerpiece—and, depending on whether or not you grew up below the Mason-Dixon, it’s either an efficient construction or an affront to the English language.
I used to feel like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, stuck in a crummy little town, bursting to get out and see the world.
For as long as she could remember, Pam wished to hear the laughter of children. That desire faded one evening. It was unexpected, as most changes promised to be.
One piece of paper can set off a slew of storytelling manufactured out of nothing more than a running imagination. A little piece of culture on a 3×4 note, left in a book.
He was holding a small, tattered Bible. He looked me in the eyes and told me, “Be a doer of the word, not just a hearer, girl.”
Maybe there are times to simply accept the truth of life as it is, not as it ought to be. Perhaps these imperfect images are the truest signposts of a world to come, indications of the need for rebirth.
I still remember just how you look/
naked, the pale curve of your back,/
the quiet inlet where it bends/ to meet the taper of your waist,/
shower water wending where it will/
along the architecture of your form.
She deduced that she really had only one option left. She would pretend to be a social critic who attends concerts not for personal enjoyment, but to document the mundanity of music in the post-hipster revival of Williamsburg.
Crime can never be abolished by disregarding the criminal, but only by loving him, and there can be no love without forgiveness first.