Here At Last Is Her Smile: Burn

- Nothing Else Has Any Efficacy, I Might As Well Be Myself. - But Your Yourself Sucks! - It Is, Lamentably, All I Have.

I Sat Down Next To Her. Took Her Hand. This Can Work, I Said. All We Have To Do Is Try.

When I Was Thinking About These Women Characters, No Matter How Bad A Person I Am - A Bad Writer, My Limitations, My Sexism, You Know - The Thought Was, It Would Be Useful As A Writer To Try To Create A Template For All The Male Writers, Especially Dominican Male Writers, Especially Males Of Color, Of How A Writer Can Use Seeing To Create More Nuanced Representations Of Women.

Nobody Likes Children, Your Mother Assured You. That Doesn't Mean You Don't Have Them.

I Mean In The Community That I Grew Up In, You Know, A Very, You Know, Mixed, Almost Entirely African Diaspora Community, One Of The Things That We Were Not Ever Supposed To Say Was How Much Self-hatred And Colorism Determined And Guided What We Would Call Our Desire. In Other Words, What We Would Consider Beautiful.