This is persistence paying. Submittable bears witness. I have sat with this piece for better than two years: noodling, reworking, revising, resubmitting. The story went live today as a finalist in the @solsticelitmag annual fiction contest. It is the closest thing to home I have written. It takes me back to a particular time of innocence, filled with hope — a thing I find especially lacking in these troubled times. https://solsticelitmag.org/content/weeks-away/ Or navigate to SHORT STORIES at link in bio 👆🏾. (Side note: the woman in the last couple of photos, screaming her head off on the back of the motorcycle. Yeah, that would be my mother 😏💕.) ___________________________________________ "Chris had never encountered a girl anywhere close to him in skin tone who had freckles–a speckled hen's egg, brown like his mother ultimately meant when she sent him to pick up a carton from Central Supermarket, a scattering of tiny flecks colored a shade browner still decorating the crowned tip of each eggshell. Could it be that he too has freckles, buried inside the depth of his dark-roast complexion? The freckles alone cemented a deep-seated infatuation." #litmag #literarycontest #weeksaway #amwriting ___________________________________________ #booktube #booktastic #booklove #bookstagram #avidreader #bibliophile #goodreads #booknerdigans #readsoullit #blackwriters #igwriters #writersofig #writersofinstagram 📚 (at Groton Skatepark) https://www.instagram.com/p/CEMurjCgmvz/?igshid=bzg6wbjijhyg









