Long After We Are Gone

by Terah Shelton Harris

This type of love is quiet. Men don’t love each other. Not in the open. Not in rural North Carolina. Not with a father like King.

Are you still family if you don’t know each other anymore? Are you still family if you don’t know the whole story?

Because no one tells you what love feels like, this kind of love, the love that sets you on fire, that burns your insides, a love that’s not easily extinguished.

She doesn’t have to be okay. She doesn’t have to be alone. She doesn’t have to carry this burden or continue to keep this secret anymore.

Now, she gazes at his beautiful face, one she isn’t sure she deserves but one she knows she cannot live without.