Seven Days in June

by Tia Williams

What was it like, the luxury of not hurting?

White authors have the freedom to tell a good story for the sake of a good story.”

Girls are given the weight of the world, but nowhere to put it down. The power and magic born in that struggle? It’s so terrifying to men that we invented reasons to burn y’all at the stake, just to keep our dicks hard.”

“Look, this quote-unquote current sociopolitical climate? It’s always been my climate. I’ve been up against Trumps and Pences and Lindsey Grahams since forever. The first one was the guard I was trapped alone in a cell with at eight years old. No laws, no cameras, no mercy. What happened in that hour made me the kind of person who doesn’t feel obligated to workshop racism with white people.” He shrugged. “The burden isn’t on me to explain it, Rich. The burden’s on y’all to fix it. Good luck.”

“I know too much,” he said, his words weighted with old pain. The kind that makes a home on the fringes of your thoughts forever.

“You burst into my solitude, demanding to be seen. You were overwhelming. Just wild and weird and brilliant, and I never had a choice. I liked everything about you. Even the scary parts. I wanted to drown in your fucking bathwater.”

Grown women knew better than to attach themselves to time bombs. Teenage girls couldn’t wait to be ruined.

“If you have the opportunity to make a moment meaningful, why not take it?”

They hated everyone who wasn’t them.

“I never realized I was lonely,” he said. “Until I met you and I wasn’t anymore.”

How could you leave me? That morning, when I woke up and you…you weren’t there. I had to teach myself how to breathe again, in a world without you in it. Do you get that?”

all the “conveniences” that were supposed to make your life easier were actually just the tech equivalent of mosquitoes buzzing in your ears.

When you’re pregnant, you think you’re gonna have a little you. A tiny person with your same thoughts, same feelings. But her daughter came out wholly herself. Self-sufficient, stubborn, too clever for the world, and an utter mystery.

“Destigmatizing male vulnerability is the first step toward rebuilding the absolute ruin that straight men have left the world in.”