Helium

by Rudy Francisco

How Did You Lose Her? I felt trapped, but another man looked at my prison and called her a church. Who would choose to be a jail when given the option of being a sanctuary?

I was taught that a woman’s vagina is just an underground railroad to masculinity, that real men have tunnel vision and treat girls like subway cars, like nothing more than a space to parallel park our genitals, a hole to bury seeds and leave orchards in our rear-view mirrors.

Adrenaline Rush

it must be nice to feel so safe, you have to invent new ways to put yourself in danger.

Being black in America is knowing there’s a thin line between a traffic stop and the cemetery,

Margin To be marginalized in America is to be a star on the face of midnight. We constantly have to rise above everything and shine our brightest when it’s dark outside.

Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address.