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Ida Know, but We Gotta Go

It is Saturday. We’re packing up to drive to my sister’s house in Jackson before Hurricane Ida hits our part of the world. “Ride it out,” they call it when you evacuate to another area. But you fly from the storm, grabbing your file of necessary papers (oh, right: add COVID vaccination cards) and hurriedly deciding what...

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Don’t Die Needlessly

During the years I volunteered at the Door of Hope, I knew several guests who had been kicked out of the house after being diagnosed with AIDS. All too often the family members did this—kicked out their loved ones—because their pastor told them the loved one had committed a sin. They were sinful. Someone to be shamed. Disowned. Kicked out. The...

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I Love You

I see you looking at my mask with disdain. You think I’m a coward, afraid of getting a virus that is no worse than the flu. One that probably doesn’t even exist, anyway. And if it does, masks sure don’t work. I’m just being a sucker.  I envy you the freedom to believe that way. I’m jealous of your luxury of theory because you’ve known no...

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The Attack

When I was in elementary school, I lived next door to the county sheriff. The sheriff’s family was best friends with my family. One of the daughters in the family was our favorite babysitter and second mom. We loved that family. The sheriff’s family had a dog. A German Shepherd. His name was Shane. Shane protected our house the same...

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Time is and was: 2020 into 2021

Do you believe in what might have been? How about what was and is again? Do you believe in that? Multiple strands of time, I’m talking about, so that, in what might have been, the twin boys I longed for in my first life—King and John Powell—are nearing thirty years old. Brown-headed handsome young men. It could have happened, if I hadn’t...

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How are You?

Hi, y’all. How are you doing? Is it going okay? Tell me the truth. I’ll start. If you’re Christian like me, it’s the Advent season leading into Christmas but all the churches are closed. If you’re American like me, it’s the transition period between presidents, which is going swimmingly. If you’re female...

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The Glow

I got a new daybed in my house. The bed is minimalist for a small but important room: the room has the sacred palm in it. I’ve reupholstered the furniture to fit in this new house. I’ve had pillows made. Lamps are set out. Pictures hung. Bedding added. Charging stations rigged up, carts assembled, rugs cleaned and laid on their mats....

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My Best Reader has Left Me

Mother at her 90th birthday party Marguerite Virginia Price Van Hecke died on May 29, 2020, following emergency surgery. Virginia was born on June 9, 1929, on the Road of Remembrance in Jackson, Mississippi, as the second child of Maggie Mae and James Murray Price, a little girl who was to have been named George William. From the start, she never...

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