Image Courtesy of Several Seconds. Shared via a Creative Commons license.

—-

for Stepha

In a little apartment in Brooklyn
we played dress up with your mother’s clothes

We wanted to be business women,
didn’t care to stand over the stove and learn to make roti

We tripped on dresses that were too long
and stumbled in high heels that were too big

We wore jewellery that was too heavy
for small necks and miniature ears

We begged our mothers for
painted lips and nails

When the grownups told us it was time to leave
we begged and pleaded for more time

If only I had known that you wouldn’t finish law school
that your picture would be plastered across the news

that they’d find your blood in a car
that there would be no word

no news
nothing.

—-

 

Racquel Henry is a Trinidadian writer and editor with an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is also a part-time English Professor and owns the writing center, Writer’s Atelier, in Winter Park, FL. In 2010, Racquel co-founded Black Fox Literary Magazine where she still serves as an editor. She writes literary, women’s, and recently YA fiction. Her stories have appeared in, Blink-Ink, The Rusty Nail, Zest Literary Journal, Lotus-Eater Literary Magazine and the chapbook, The Best of There Will Be Words 2014, among others.