Luster

by Raven Leilani

He brings up the weather and then we are talking about climate change. After a while of talking generally about burning to death, we pull into the park.

The last time I painted, I was twenty-one. The president was Black. I had more serotonin and I was less afraid of men.

his ambivalence about God appearing to be a welcome bit of levity as opposed to what it really was—a profound vacuum in the place where God used to go. During the years he killed for his country, he’d killed God, too, and he came back home inspired to make one of his own.

“This isn’t my fault.” “The slogan of your generation.” “Why does it have to be my generation? Why can’t it be me, specifically?” “Because you are not specific,” she says. “All of this, it has been done.”

God is not for women. He is for the fruit. He makes you want and he makes you wicked, and while you sleep, he plants a seed in your womb that will be born just to die.