I awoke to no hot water again today. it went on strike yesterday afternoon, and this morning, I’d had it.
a work order was requested, and within an hour, maintenance rapped at my door.
ten minutes later, hot water was roaring from the faucets.
how easy it was for me to forget the luxuriousness of something so simple that took almost no time to fix.
first world problems aren’t as big as we make them out to be, so why do we spend time doing so?
AI Generated Image: An angry Black woman yelling at the TV screen.
mother’s curbed anger
my mom has denounced her pugilistic ways, choosing to engage in reasonable debate instead.
as a girlchild who witnessed her violent side more than I can count,
I learned that her anger lived in me, too.
what I had to relearn was: being provoked will always spark in-depth angst, but the decision to
breathe through it, and “make good choices” can actually save my life.
Have you gotten your copy of my new book: a collection of serial tales & flash fiction, Séduire (E-BookandPaperback) yet?
I recently signed up to write on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak aboutthe most recent events with my place of employment as it pertains to racism and discrimination. I welcome your visit.
Pictured Microfiction: An Ugly War. Created with Canva. By now, I’m sure all of you have heard what Donald J. Trump has done. WWIII, here we come. I have a cousin, Chrissy’s daughter, who lives in Bahrain. I have been checking in with her–making sure she’s okay. She is not far from Iran at all. God, save us from the actions of a madman and the people who follow his insane rhetoric and bring it to life.
Have you gotten your copy of my new book: a collection of serial tales & flash fiction, Séduire (E-BookandPaperback) yet?
I recently signed up to write on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak aboutthe most recent events with my place of employment as it pertains to racism and discrimination. I welcome your visit.
Too Much and Never Enough. Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
Recently, I finished Mary L. Trump’s book,Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, which I believe everyone in the United States should read. I sat with this book for a few weeks, savoring it. I did not want to rush through it, so I did not. I took everything in, digested all of it as best as I could, and I am happy that I spent as much time with it as I did.
I reviewed it both on Amazonand Goodreads, and the review is as follows:
“Every Family Has a Bit of Dysfunction
But the Trump Family, as it’s told by Mary L. Trump, Donald J. Trump’s niece, is on a whole other level of shadiness, greed, carelessness, and self-fulfilling tactics.
Mary, a Clinical Psychologist, posits that her uncle’s behavior didn’t simply evolve on its own, he had help. The culprit? Her grandfather, Fred Trump.
Donald was a puppet, a means to an end for her grandfather; someone he wanted to abide by his rules and show that he could carry on the family business in the most vindictive ways possible.
If Donald couldn’t satisfy his father’s requirements, his father’s love would be harder to obtain. Imagine knowing your entire life is a circus; that your performance is monitored and calculated, and if you don’t perform well, you mean nothing. You are nothing.
Reading this book gave me a better understanding of the current sitting president’s mental health, and a deeper look into his overall background as a member of the Trump Family.
I remembered his brother Freddy (Mary’s father) and tales of his demise before reading the book, and was recounting the story to my mother a couple months ago.
To thumb through every page pertaining to his involvement in his father’s business and how it brought about his dive into alcoholism and a slow rotting depression, made my heart ache.
If you’re an empath, you’ll read this book and walk away more knowledgeable about people-pleasing and the need to feed our parents’ curiosity into who they want their children to become. You’ll be left with the pain of this world because of the carelessness of a few.
Donald will never seek help from what his past has done to his present self. “Donald today is much as he is at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his response, or take in and synthesize information.”
And with this, we have a human being in the highest seat of the land (once again), performing theatrics and skirting around important issues because he is still living to please a person who is no longer alive; his father.
We are all at the mercy of a person who does not care about the American people and never will. The end goal for him is complete and utter power and the ultimate hierarchy status. Dictatorship. Kingship.
“If he can in any way, profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.”
For a deeper understanding of the person America wanted as president yet again, I recommend this book. Learn about the mistake we made. Engross yourself in the damage you may have caused if he was your choice during this past presidential election.
Take a look at the baby trapped in an elderly man’s body whose sole purpose is to obliterate anything that stands in his way of getting everything he wants.
Did you make the right choice? I am certain Mary L. Trump, the author of this book and niece of Donald J. Trump, would say, “No, you did not.”‘
I do not say any of the above with a silver spoon tied to my mouth. I am a hard-working, low-level middle-class, Black, bisexual woman who lives in the South. Basically, I am everything Trump hates. My bones are completely and utterly tired of the drama seeping into my marrow from the daily antics of a man who “doesn’t know any better.” Donald is still operating as a child would; a teenager who will tantrum it out if he or she doesn’t get their way. This is what we’ve been gifted with Trump 2.0.
If you can sleep well at night knowing everything that has occurred since January 20, 2025, has your name stamped all over it, then you and I would not be kissing cousins or good buddies offline. It is telling of the type of person you are with regards to what you want for the American people, what you want for our allies, and any other human being living and breathing on this planet. That shit is contagious, and I don’t want it around me.
As for the book, I plan to read it again and maybe again after that. To know a niece could tell the world all about her uncle while he’s still alive, lets me know his past is his present, and he has no way of differentiating between the two, and we are all going to suffer because of it. We probably should have heeded her warning.
This will probably be my favorite segment on my blog in a very long time! Welcome to Opening Lyrics to Songs That I Love!
“Cure” is the lead single from ‘Voyager’, the third album from the LA-based trio Moonchild – whose candid style of soul and new-school jazz has propelled them onto a swirling, emotionally charged journey of the heart. “Cure” has been met with upfront radio support from Gilles Peterson and Jamz Supernova, kind words from Soul Bounce & Saint Heron and was premiered via The Fader.
The moment “Cure” unfurls, so do the sweltering, bluesy vocals of Amber Navran, whose soothing words provide comfort as they ask for trust. Written about falling for somebody who’s still getting over their ex, Navran’s vocals croon over a bed of soft synth and keyboard flourishes that were inspired by Stevie Wonder’s ‘70s era. The beat is swathed in a cool LA sound, whilst saccharine guitar strums, and a newly found love for sampling bird songs are captured in glittering refrains.
What moves me about these opening lyrics? Amber is so creative and free with her voice. It is luring. It is calming. It is “stop right there and let me say this to you” worthy. I have replayed those very lyrics more times than I care to count. They are balm to a hurting soul. They are needed in times of anguish and pain. I hope they move you, too.
For the next eight Sundays, I’ll share with you my favorite opening lyrics to songs I truly love. Maybe you’ll enjoy it. Maybe you won’t. Perhaps you’ll share favorite opening lyrics to songs you love as well. Perhaps you won’t. Either way, we’re going to have a good damn time.
Pictured Microfiction created with Canva. Sunday, June 15, 2025, was Father’s Day, and I already had two posts scheduled to publish. I did not want a third. Therefore, you get this treat today on a Tuesday.
Have you gotten your copy of my new book: a collection of serial tales & flash fiction, Séduire (E-BookandPaperback) yet?
I recently signed up to write on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak aboutthe most recent events with my place of employment as it pertains to racism and discrimination. I welcome your visit.
A Father’s Day tribute to the fathers who are doing what they should, when they should, and how they should for their children.
AI-Generated Image: A Black father and his young daughter hugging each other and smiling.
Hey, Daddy. Is it okay for me to still call you, “Daddy?” At my age, it seems infantile and off-key… somehow, I feel that you don’t mind. I know you don’t mind. Over the years, I’ve taken the time to reflect on what it must have been like for you, a young father in your teenage years, trying to raise a daughter. What did you have to learn and how? Did you have questions? Were you afraid? Did you look at me and see hope, fear, and pain? How did you manage to pour so much love into me as a man I never knew I needed when you didn’t have a father yourself?
I’ve never met my grandfather. He died while you were still eating icies on park benches or chasing girls on skates. Remember that story you told me about that one neighborhood chick who smacked you in the face with her skate and chipped your front tooth? What were you doing? Ah, yes… you smacked her on the ass when you saw her walk by. Serves you right. I think I even told you that. And you mentioned, Grandma Tiggs (your grandmother, my great-grandmother) whooped your behind shortly after for good measure. Ha! Again, serves you right! You told me you learned a valuable lesson; women’s bodies are sacred and should be treated as such.
You still have that chipped front tooth.
Yet, that didn’t stop you from dipping into and dodging multiple women. You were a quiet ho. You have told me this a number of times. Said you couldn’t outrun the blood in your veins–the many men before you who’d ho’ed around and gotten away with it. Multiple Rolling Stone Papas in our family. You were just following suit–raised by the role models who were too busy modeling in between the sheets instead of teaching you how to properly treat a girl/young lady/woman.
And there you were, looking at a baby girl with your entire face staring back at you. 360° of change crept into your heart. You saw a version of yourself you knew you needed to take care of–needed to protect. I became a means to an end for you… a savior of sorts? Yes! Isn’t that what you said?
Mama mentioned being jealous of me the first few years of my life.
I stole her man.
Me with my big, bright brown eyes. Me with my uneven lips. Me with my smooth, sandy red hair, laid evenly on my head. I stole her man. How could someone fix their mouth to say something like that to their child? I remember cocking my head to the side, shifting my expression, and rebutting, “Oh, is that right?” to her because what else was there to say?
But I look back at our pictures and I notice your smile is a bit wider–a bit happier–a bit more focused, and it was all for me. I was your show-stopper, your new reason for living. So, maybe jealousy was warranted from a woman who spent her high school years chasing behind a man, catching him, then breaking his heart before he could break hers.
I doted on you. Everything you did mesmerized me–I longed to be at my Daddy’s side. 19 years later… after the divorce… after the boys… after trials, errors, tribulations, and victories, you created another version of yourself who looks so much like me. Together, we’ve stolen your heart. You no longer have it. It’s split in half between the two of us. And as much as I wanted to fight her for it when she was born, I cannot deny the fact that she needs it just as much as I do.
And you never loved me any differently. You never changed. You still, Hey Baby’d me every time I called. I only felt like I was losing you because you no longer lived at home. Home was another place for you. In another world, far from what my longing heart needed. I was left with a mother who didn’t know herself, so she ran behind men to find the pieces of her life she dropped in the dank spaces of clubs and hot corners.
I don’t think the boys will ever understand what your girls have with you–what we mean. The first and the last. They’re all in the middle. You have to gather them up one by one and spew different, varied versions of the same scripture into their minds:
Proverbs 4:1:“Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction, and be attentive, that you may gain insight.”
Proverbs 4:1:“Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction, and be attentive, that you may gain insight.”
Psalm 103:13:“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”
Hebrews 12:7:“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”
Colossians 3:21:“Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.”
But you can utter only one to me and my sister, and we hear you loud and clear: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”, Psalm 103:13.
AI-Generated Image: A Black father hugging his two daughters, one older and one younger.
Now that I am 45 years old, I wonder, how are your early 60s treating you as you still parent me? You are patient. You are kind. You are a critical thinker who passed these characteristics onto me, and you haven’t flinched in your actions toward my womanhood. I can call you with my worries, but I don’t–not often. I can call you when I am crying, but I don’t–not often. I can call you when someone has broken my heart, but I don’t–not often. But when I do, you offer me your undivided attention and you give me the floor. And with this, I throw every inch of pain at it and watch it dance before me in waves.
And most calmly, every single time, you tell me that if life were easy, I wouldn’t grow. I wouldn’t learn. There would be no lessons for me to share with those coming after me. You let me wail into the receiver, you give my tears the greeting they deserve. And then you remind me of who I am and of the strength coursing through my veins.
You are not going to save me from adulthood. You let me lean into it and feel it as I need to, and then… You love me even harder. And this is what I’ll remember, Daddy. It is why I love you as hard as I do. It is why I know until the last breath I breathe, your heart is mine. And my heart is yours.
For the fathers braving every single day, raising their daughters. For fathers who fall short, yet still pick up the slack. For fathers who give everything they have of themselves to their children without hesitation. For the young ones who manifest greatness, and it seems to wither before their eyes. For every uncle, grandfather, big brother, and caring neighbor who took on more than they should have… I see you, and I love you for your existence.
A Cornered Gurl 
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