NIA HOWARD

*As featured in Vol 6 of Five on the Fifth Literary Magazine He tells me I make the chai too spicy. He kisses me on the nape of my neck before taking his cup to the small table by the balcony. He lights a cigarette, and the smoke stretches and curls over a sleepy city…

It was 1973. I can’t remember whether it was a cool or warm morning, but it was sometime between the spring and summer because it still rained often. But not that day. The early sun was still pale and ricocheted off the piles of books on the red Persian rug. The piles, and towers, and…

“You see, your skin was blue when you was born,” Judy’s mother would tell her every night before bed. “Eyes big as saucers themselves.” She would brush a curl out of Judy’s face and give her a kiss light as snowfall. “We’re from the stars, girl.” She never told Judy about the umbilical cord, and…

We lived in one of those pit-stop, small towns. The ones that just exist on the edge of a two-lane highway where tall yellow grass grows and abandoned rusted trailers accumulate in the fields. The ones that travelers only come to on their way to somewhere else. It was beautiful in its own way, but…

Whatever happened to the electricity of the night, I wonder, walking in the unusually warm summer evening through my hometown— a small port city just on the edge of the harbor. The smell of fresh rain and gasoline from the boats idling to dock still bring out the sea’s strong briny musk; the city’s lights,…