Flinches Story
Between My Own Lines
There was a man who lived his life drawing lines. Not on paper. Not on maps.
Inside himself. He divided who he was into neat little sections, hoping never to let them bleed into one another. One line for the past. One line for his regrets. One line for who he showed his world. And one deep, heavy line for everything he refused to face.
To his co-workers, he was cheerful, confident, reliable.
To his friends, he was funny, laid-back, the one who always tried to joke even when the conversation was serious.
To his family, he was distant but present, polite but guarded.
And to himself? He wasn’t quite sure. He kept that version locked away, somewhere deep where even he didn’t dare look too closely.
They called him Flinch, because whenever he felt uncomfortable his eyes would start flinching. Kind of like some impulse control. It didn’t last long but boy would his eye start flinching whenever he was in conversation that made him feel uncomfortable.
At night, when the lights went out and there was no one left to perform for, he felt the lines he had drawn all his life tightening. He felt the boy he once was, calling from the other side of the wall he had built: The boy who still remembered his father leaving. The boy who still heard the harsh words said by a mother to a father she tried to love. The boy who was told to "man up" before he even understood what being a man meant. But he wouldn’t answer that boy. He’d stir in the mirror maybe urn on the TV. Scroll through his phone. Numb the sound. Because facing himself meant facing the truth: That he was lonely. That he was tired. That he didn’t know who he was without those lines.
One day, while walking through the park alone, he passed a mural — bright, chaotic, messy. A line split the painting in two, but the colors didn’t respect it. They spilled over, mixed, created something unexpected. He stood there for a long time, staring. The world does not stay in its lines, he thought. Why should I?
That night, he sat quietly. No TV. No mirror this time. Just himself. And for the first time in years, he crossed one of his lines. He let himself cry. It wasn’t weakness. It was honesty. The lines didn’t vanish all at once. But one by one, they blurred. And he began to realize: The man he was running from wasn’t his enemy. He was just waiting to be seen.
It was a dull Monday morning. The weekend was still very much alive in his veins. And somewhere between the night before and day break a sense of urgency cam over him. He got from his bed looked himself in the mirror and said to himself, “You want the truth? Fine. Here it is.”
I drew lines.
Lines between who I am and who I pretend to be.
Lines between the man people see and the boy I left behind.
Lines between what I feel and what I’m allowed to show.
It’s easier that way. Clean. Controlled. Safe. Because if you blur those lines, if you let one part bleed into the other, then suddenly you’re not in control anymore. You’re just… exposed. Vulnerable. Human.
I can’t risk that.
Not after everything I’ve seen in this life. You see, no one tells boys how heavy it is to carry silence. No one tells you how shame curls itself around your ribs when you’re told to “man up” before you even know what sadness is. How loneliness becomes your language. How fear becomes your compass. How pretending becomes survival.
So yeah, I perform. Smile. Joke with people who are my family but still don’t really knew me.
Work. Achievements. Politeness. Anything but honesty.
Because honesty means admitting: I’m tired. I’m lost. I’m scared. I’m still broken in places I can’t name. But here’s the thing about lines, Flinch: You can only live divided for so long. Eventually, the cracks show. Eventually, you get tired of pretending you’re whole. Eventually, you realize that the enemy you’ve been avoiding —the weak, the scared, the grieving boy you buried —he’s not your enemy Flinch!
He’s just… you. Waiting. Waiting to be forgiven. Waiting to be loved. Waiting to be understood.
Waiting to be enough! (deep pause)
So right now, let the lines blur. Today, I stand with my shame and my fear and my truth. And I say it out loud for no one but me to hear:
I’m done hiding.
I’m done dividing.
I’m done drawing lines where there should be bridges.
I’m ready to meet myself. Finally.
Flinch now looking in the mirror at himself. So now what? You think I’m ranting because I’m deep.
Nah.
I’m ranting because there’s too much noise in my head. Looking at himself in the mirror as if he could cross the lines and go inside it to the otherside.
Flinch continued: “You wanna know where it started? Fine, his eyes bulging with tears. There was only fists and yelling and babies screaming “momma momma, daddie please!!! Started with a father who loved his liquor more than his wife,
more than his kids. Started,with a mother who flinched so often every weekend night or holiday
she forgot how to breathe without fear.
Five brothers. Three sisters. A house full of people, but somehow…somehow I felt more alone than I knew was possible on those weekend nights and holiday, always waiting at the line between life and death. Waiting for my father to kill my mother on one of those violent episodes, episodes that ran season after season without end.
At thirteen, he finally left. Despite it all, somewhere in our minds, he was still the good dad. That’s the version we clung to, the one we tried to hold onto because it hurt too much to do otherwise. We told ourselves he was a hard worker — up before the sun, sweat on his brow, calloused hands bringing home the weight of his pride in a paycheck. He was stern, yes, and a disciplinarian, but wasn’t that what fathers were supposed to be? You dared not be caught away from the front door when he showed up from work, dared not still be laughing and wrestling in the bedroom when he’d said, enough for the night.
Those were the rules. His house. His law.
We wanted to remember those Sundays best. The quiet ones, when the world seemed still. Sitting at his feet, half-listening as he spun stories from the Bible, his voice low and steady. Our small fingers gently picking the little bumps from his face — the softest kind of intimacy we could offer a man built from rough edges.
We wanted those moments to be our forever.
We tried, so hard, to blot out the others — the nights of terror, the screams muffled behind thin walls, the seven of us crouched together like frightened animals in the shadows. Hiding, waiting, praying he wouldn’t come for us next after breaking her down piece by fragile piece.
Our mother — our angel in a worn dress, trembling but refusing to fall, fighting to survive the hell that walked through the front door each night wearing the face of the man we called Daddy.
Yes, somewhere deep down, we still wanted to believe there was a part of him that was good. And that’s the part we still wanted to remember. Because the truth was too sharp to carry.
I thought it’d get easier after that. But violence doesn’t leave just because the man does.
It lingers. In how you learn to keep your mouth shut. In how you learn to never trust loud noises in your home day or night. In how you start to believe that love equals pain as much as you tried not to.
So I drew lines.
I had to.
Lines between me and the past.
Lines between me and my siblings.
Lines between me and my own heart.
People only got the version of me I thought was safe to show. The actor, the steady worker.
The friend who always laughs.
The man who doesn’t cry.
But beneath all that? I’ve been holding pieces of that thirteen-year-old kid for years.
The kid who watched his mother bleed. The kid who learned how to clean stained walls,
but couldn’t remove the stains inside himself. You can run from yourself a long time.
Trust me, I’ve done the miles. Trust me. With that, Flinch walked over to his sofe sat down and began to reminest. Clubs. Dancing. Acting.
All distractions to keep from looking in the mirror too long.
But you get tired. One day, you sit down, alone in your apartment, no TV on, no phone in hand,
and the silence you’ve been dodging finally catches up.
I heard myself think, Flinch, this ain’t living. This is hiding. So here I am.
Trying to break the lines I drew.
Trying to forgive a father who never said sorry.
Trying to forget the memories of a mother who stayed longer than she should have.
Trying to forgive a boy who thought survival meant hiding.
I don’t want to hide anymore.
I want to feel.
I want to heal.
I want to live without dividing myself into pieces to make everyone else comfortable.
So if you ask me who I am now?
I’m Flinch. I’m a man learning to be whole.
No more lines.
No more hiding. No more flinching
Just me… finally… facing myself.
Amina and Tony
Across the lines:
A Love Story
from Brooklyn to Mogadishu
written by: Rarmoud Ronnee
Amina Ahmed had spent her whole life following rules she never agreed to.
Rules written for her before she was born: how to dress, how to speak, how to behave, how to dream — or more accurately, how not to dream beyond the walls of her immigrant home.
Her father wasn’t cruel. He was traditional. A Somali man who worked hard, prayed harder, and carried with him the fear of a world that had already stolen too much from his people. To him, America was dangerous, Brooklyn even more so. And so, for Amina, there were rules.
No dating.
No boys.
No outsiders.
But then came Tony. Tony wasn’t supposed to be part of her story. He was just the funny guy from Flatbush who sat next to her in sociology class. At first, they barely spoke beyond class assignments. But slowly, through group projects and long conversations in the library, something began to grow between them — something neither of them expected.
They both loved poetry, especially Langston Hughes.
They debated hip-hop versus R&B with the passion of two people trying to defend their childhoods. They could spend hours talking about film, about identity, about what it meant to grow up in a place where everyone thought they knew who you were before you even opened your mouth.
For Amina, Tony became a door she never knew existed — a window into a world where people spoke openly, where laughter wasn’t something to hide behind closed doors. For Tony, Amina wasn’t just another Muslim girl. She was the first person who really listened to his stories about growing up Black, being too dark for one side, too "ghetto" for the other, always code-switching, always adjusting.
It wasn’t easy for either of them. They both carried scars from the worlds they came from.
Amina tried to explain why her father’s distrust wasn’t personal — it was cultural, historical, inherited from generations of fear, she would say.
Tony tried to explain that just because he wasn’t Muslim or more candidly, a Black guy from Brooklyn didn’t mean he was a threat to her faith or her dignity.
“It’s not you,” she’d say. “It’s what you represent… to them.”
“I get it,” he’d say. “But that doesn’t make it any less ugly. I got more African in my blood then most people, doesn’t that count for something?”
Sometimes they fought without meaning to.
Once, Tony made a joke about how hijabis were “untouchable” — protected, shielded.
Amina didn’t laugh. “You think this scarf protects me from anything?” she said. “It makes me a target, Tony. In every way.”
Another time, Amina assumed Tony couldn’t understand what it meant to have family dictate every move.
“You just don’t get it, Tony. My dad still decides what time I come home.” Tony looking intense at Amina almost as if he couldn’t wait to say what he had on his mind, blurted,
“You think my mom didn’t raise me the same way? You think Black mothers don’t worry about their kids walking these streets? You’re dad ain’t the only one carrying fear, Amina.”
Their honesty wasn’t meant to hurt. But truth ain’t always easy.
Amina had heard whispers in her community about Black men.
“There bums, drug addicts, alcoholics, no god, no religion.”
Tony often got told from his friends,
“Why you wasting time with some girl who gotta ask permission to breathe?”
They both lived under the weight of other people’s expectations, other people’s ignorance.
But when they were alone together, walking through Prospect Park bottled water in hand, or sitting on stoops trading childhood stories, all that noise faded.
They learned to ask, not assume. They learned to listen, not defend. They learned that love wasn’t blind; it saw everything, the differences, the struggles, the history.
And love chose not to draw any lines.
Still, they both knew the road ahead wasn’t going to be easy, not for a moment.
Amina feared losing her family, her faith community.
Tony feared losing her to fear itself.
But they kept showing up.
They kept choosing honesty, even when it hurt.
Because deep down, they understood something neither of them could say out loud yet:
Freedom isn’t just about breaking rules. It’s about building something true where none of the old rules ever mattered.
So little by little, between laughter, arguments, tears, and trust, Amina and Tony were building something real —
a friendship, a love, a possibility — bound not by race or religion, but by respect.
One chilly afternoon, as they sat on a bench overlooking Prospect Park, sipping hot chocolate and watching the leaves scatter like broken promises, Amina told Tony something she had never told anyone. They had been talking — carefully, as they often did — about the walls between them. About the looks she got from her own people, the warnings he got from his. About how hard it was to carve out something real in a world obsessed with labels: Black. Muslim. Immigrant. Hood. Drug Dealer.
But then Amina fell silent, staring at the cracked concrete beneath her shoes. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said quietly. “Something about my father.” Tony leaned in. “What is it? She took a breath, the words heavy like stones in her mouth.
“One time… I was younger, maybe sixteen. We were watching the news. Some report about violence in Brownsville. Some Black kids caught with guns. Someone was shot and killed. My father — he didn’t even hesitate. He looked at me and said: ‘You know you can’t trust those people’” Tony’s face tightened, but he said nothing. He’d heard it before, just not from her.
“I said, ‘Those people?’” Amina went on. “And he said, ‘Yeah, those people. They have no respect for one another. They sell drugs and kill each other. Just look at the news, Amina.’”
The shame in her voice was thick, but it wasn’t hers to carry.
“I was so disturbed by what he said, “I looked at him… this man who raised me to believe in God, in justice, in dignity and I reminded him of our own history. The violence between Arab tribes that still exists. The wars. The corruption. The misogyny. How many of our women get beaten in silence. How many of our own people kill each other in the name of pride or family honor.”
She paused. “I reminded him of the Arab slave trade. How we sold Africans into slavery right alongside the White man. Tony couldn’t believe his hears. She continued, I said, ‘And you want to talk about people killing their own people? What nerve… Dad.’”
Tony sat there, quiet. Processing.
“You said all that to him?” Amina nodded. “He didn’t speak to me for three days.” They both laughed, a soft, tired kind of laugh. Not because it was funny. Because it was too familiar. Because bias runs deep, even in the oppressed. Tony looked at her, really looked. “That’s why I respect you, Amina. You don’t pretend the world is clean just because it makes people comfortable.” “And you,” she smiled, “you don’t let it break you.”
They sat there a while longer, the silence between them not awkward, but honest. They both knew love wasn’t enough to erase the weight of history. But maybe — just maybe — it was enough to write a new story….together. Amina’s eyes widened as Tony leaned back, staring at the sky like he was trying to pull the right words down from the clouds. “I’ve got a confession to make,” he said. “Since we’re being honest and open.” Amina nodded, curious now. Tony exhaled slowly, like what he was about to say had been sitting on his chest for years.
“My father… he was a merchant marine. Traveled all over. Africa. Europe. The Middle East. You name it. But there was this one place he always talked about more than the others — Saudi Arabia.” Amina raised an eyebrow. “Saudi?” Tony nodded. “Yeah. Said he met a woman there. Beautiful. Arab women. She was stuck in some abusive marriage. Said her husband treated her like dirt, like she wasn’t worth anything except to clean his draws feed him and have... babies, but she didn’t know how to get out. You know how it is over there… women can’t just walk away. My pops… he wasn’t looking for trouble, but he always said, ‘Love don’t ask for permission. Love don’t care about borders.’”
Amina’s hand slowly covered her mouth, sensing where this was going. “Long story short?” Tony said, looking down at his hands. “That woman… she’s my mother.” Amina’s heart skipped. “What?” Tony nodded again. “Yeah. My mother. He brought her back with him on one of his trips, a stowaway in a cargo ship, quietly. No paperwork, no announcement. Just… one day, she was here. Changed her name. Learned English. Tried to disappear. My father kept her secret all his life. Not even my grandparents knew. Not my uncles. Nobody. I didn’t even know… not until he thought he was dying. Said he saw death knocking at his door” “What did he say?” Amina whispered.
Tony’s voice softened, took on the weight of memory. “He said, ‘Tony, if I’m gonna leave this world, you need to know something I never told anyone… not even your grandparents. Not even your uncles. Your mother… she’s not who you think she is.’” Tony shook his head. “He told me everything. How she cried the night he left her there, thought he wasn’t ever coming back, how she prayed week after week he’d come back to rescue her. How when he finally did, she packed one suitcase, left behind her family, her faith, her language… everything… just for a chance to be free.”
Silence settled between them, deep and thoughtful. Amina felt tears prick the back of her eyes. This wasn’t just about them anymore. This was about generations. About pain wrapped in secrets. About freedom being traded for survival. “Does your mother know you know?” she asked. “She knows now,” Tony said. “And for the first time, she ain’t hiding. She told me her real name. Showed me old letters she never mailed. Pictures she thought she’d never look at again.” He looked at Amina, his eyes softer than she’d ever seen. “So, yeah… when your father talks about ‘those people,’ he don’t realize he’s talking about people like my mother. People like me.” Amina smiled, not because it was funny… but because the world really was that small, that complicated and that interconnected.
“You and me,” she said, shaking her head gently. “We got more in common than either of us could have imagined or for that matter my father would ever want to admit.” Tony laughed, but there was no bitterness in it. Only................. understanding. “Yeah. Ain’t that something.”
They sat quietly for a long moment, two lives tangled in history, bound now by truth. And somehow, through all the prejudice, pain, and past regrets, they both understood — this connection between them wasn’t accidental. It was survival. It was healing. It was hope. It was the future daring to be written. It was the lines between them being erased.
end
Bubbles
written by: Rarmoud Ronnee
“When White girls looking like sista’s with them bodies”
I don’t know exactly when it started — when white girls began looking like “sisters.” You know what I mean. Curves. Hips that talk when they walk. Thick thighs that don’t apologize for taking up space. Breasts sitting high and full, daring you to look twice.
Wasn’t like that when I was coming up. Not where I’m from. Back then, if you saw a white girl shaped like that, people assumed she had Black somewhere back in her bloodline. Or she was Italian, maybe Puerto Rican. But just plain white? No.
But times change. Or bodies do. Or maybe tastes. Maybe the world just finally caught up to what some of us always knew: curves ain’t color-bound.
Her name was Bubbles.
That’s all I ever knew her as. Never asked for her government name because Bubbles just… fit. Like a nickname she’d been wearing since birth. Like a title she’d earned just by moving through the world the way she did.
I met her on a Sunday afternoon, Coney Island. The kind of day where the sun feels like honey on your skin and every song on someone’s speaker makes you feel seventeen again.
I was there with my boy Drew, posted up on the boardwalk, watching the waves roll lazy. That’s when I saw her.
White girl. Blonde, but not the flat kind. More honey-gold, sun-kissed, soft. She had on this little red two-piece that didn’t leave much to the imagination. And brother, let me tell you — imagination wasn’t necessary.
Hips.
Thighs.
Ass.
Built like she’d been raised on cornbread and collard greens, not kale and sparkling water. She walked like she knew people were looking. Like she expected it. Like she didn’t mind one bit.
“Damn,” Drew said under his breath. “Look at that.”
I looked.
We all did.
But I was the one who got up, walked over, and said something.
“Excuse me, but… they call you Bubbles?”
She smiled. Slow. Easy. Like she’d heard that question a hundred times.
“Yeah. Why?”
I shrugged. “Just seemed right. I figured a girl like you had to have a name like that.”
She laughed. Not a girly laugh. A deep, warm one. Real.
“You ain’t wrong.”
We sat on the sand after that, talking. About nothing at first. Music. Food. Summer. Then deeper. Family. Loneliness. How people see you before they even know you. How people assume things based on your skin, your shape, the way you walk.
“I didn’t ask for this body,” she said, stretching her legs out in front of her, toes wiggling in the sand. “Didn’t do anything special to get it. People think I did, but nah… just runs in the family. My grandmama was built like this. My mama too. I guess genetics don’t follow stereotypes.”
I liked that about her. The honesty. The ease. The way she didn’t try to explain herself beyond what was necessary.
“You get tired of the attention?” I asked.
She looked at me, head tilted. “Depends on who’s paying it.”
The sun started to dip, painting everything gold. Drew waved from the boardwalk, but I waved him off. I wasn’t leaving just yet.
Bubbles leaned in a little. “You got a name, or you just gonna keep calling me Bubbles all day?”
“Marcus,” I said. “But people call me Lucky.”
She smiled again. “I can see why.”
We watched the water together, not saying much after that. Sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Sometimes it says:
We see each other.
Beyond the skin. Beyond the shape. Beyond the questions.
Just two people — black, white, curved, lean, whatever — sharing a moment under a sky that don’t belong to nobody.
I asked her had she ever been with a "brother" before". Without hesitation she said "no" why do you ask? I responded, "I'm just asking". She then lowered her head a little and said shyfully, "I've always wondered what that would be like". Hearing her respond that way wasn't surprising. But I did wonder about that answer so I asked, "well, why haven’t you.” She said most black guys seem to afraid to just talk…like how we are doing right now. No one I have met has taken any conversation beyond just asking my name. And then there's the black girls when they see you with a black guy they look at you like you just stole the hair off their head. With that she chuckled a little.
I wasn’t surprised by her answer. Not really. I’ve seen it plenty of times. Some white girls with curves like that? They draw looks from everybody. Brothers look, sure — but looking and stepping up ain’t the same thing. Most dudes don’t know how to approach that without stumbling over their own nerves, or sounding stupid, or making it about one thing and one thing only.
But here we were. Talking….Easy…. Natural.
I smiled a little and said, “Well, you can’t blame the brothers too much. Some of ‘em been raised to believe certain girls are off-limits… especially girls that look like you.”
Bubbles tilted her head again, giving me that curious look she had. “Off-limits? Why? I don’t belong to nobody.”
“That’s not how it works. Not out here. You know that.”
She sighed, real soft. “Yeah… I know.” Then she chuckled, almost under her breath. “And you’re right about the black girls. Some of them give me that look like I stole something. I’ve seen it. I feel it.”
I laughed too. “You ain’t lying.”
“It’s weird though,” she said. “I’m not trying to steal nothing. Not trying to take what ain’t mine. I just… like who I like. Talk to who talks to me. But sometimes it feels like I gotta explain myself just to have a conversation.”
I nodded, looking out at the water, the waves coming in soft and slow.
“Truth is, most of us — black, white, whoever — we don’t talk enough. Not really. Not like this. We look, we guess, we assume. But talk? Nah. Too scared of being judged, too scared of stepping wrong.”
Bubbles played with a strand of her hair, wrapping it around her finger. “Well… I’m glad you stepped right.”
I smiled again, because I couldn’t help it. “Me too.”
She looked at me then, really looked. Not just at my face, but at me. Like she was weighing something in her mind.
“I’ve always wondered,” she said, softer now, “what it would be like. Not just… y’know… physically. I mean… to really be with someone Black. To see the world through that experience. To learn someone’s story. To understand that side of things in a way you can’t from books or movies. I guess… I just never met the right man willing to have that conversation first.”
“Well,” I said, leaning back on my elbows, “maybe today’s your lucky day.”
She smiled. Slow. Real.
“Maybe it is, Lucky.”
And just like that, the space between us felt smaller.
Sometimes it don’t take much. Just a question asked without fear An answer given without shame. A laugh shared between two people sitting on the edge of something neither of them expected when they woke up that morning.
That’s how things begin.
Not with game.
Not with lines.
Just… honesty.
And maybe a girl named Bubbles on a beach at Coney Island.
end
The Story of
Peaches
written by: Rarmoud Ronnee
"When you don't fit into the world's boxes, maybe it's because you were never meant to"
“When you don’t fit into the world’s boxes, maybe it’s because you were never meant to.”
Kasha had the kind of beauty that made people ask questions before they asked her name.
Light golden skin, big dark eyes, and a halo of curls that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be tight spirals or loose waves. Her nose was slim, but her lips were full. Her hips wide, but her frame small. Even in a plain t-shirt, she looked like she’d been drawn by an artist trying to capture something in between.
“Where you from, girl?”
“What are you, mixed with something?”
“Are you Puerto Rican? Are you Black? Are you Creole? Dominican? What?”
People’s questions followed her everywhere — from the playground to the college quad to the corner store where old men leaned on counters and tried to place her like they were studying a map.
Kasha never answered them directly. She just smiled, slow and sly.
“I’m Peaches,” she’d say, like it explained everything. And in a way, it did.
She got the name from Nina Simone, the High Priestess of Soul herself. That song — Four Women — had etched itself in Kasha’s bones since the first time her mother played it while cleaning the house.
“My skin is tan / my hair is long / my hips invite you / my mouth like wine…”
Peaches.
Not Black. Not white. Not fully one thing or another. Just Peaches. Sweet. Bruised. Complex.
Her mother was Black. A poet with roots in Georgia clay and Mississippi blues and Harlem. Her father was Puerto Rican and Irish, a saxophone player who left behind more questions than answers. A White boy playing like that, people often said. He got to have some soul in his blood. Soul he had from the plena beating on the beaches of Luquillo he heard as a child to the streets of San Juan and the salsa rhythm people danced to as he blew his horn with groups like “El Gran Combo, Senora Poncena, Tito Puente and Bobby Valentine. He was a true “Cocolo” in every sense of the word.
“I’m everything and nothing at all,” Kasha used to say to herself in the mirror.
She wore gold hoops big enough to make a statement. Lip gloss sticky and sweet.
Some days her eyeliner was sharp enough to cut you; other days she let her freckles show.
People loved her, envied her, wanted to claim her.
Black girls would say, “You one of us, right?”
Latinas would say, “Girl, you family, yeah?”
White girls would whisper, “She’s exotic.” Like she was a fruit they’d never seen in the store.
She didn’t belong anywhere and belonged everywhere all at once.
At parties, men circled her like bees around honey. They wanted to figure her out, possess her, pin her down like a butterfly behind glass.
“You remind me of somebody,” they’d say.
Of course she did. Everyone thought they saw themselves in her, somehow.
But Kasha? She just walked and danced, slow, sensual, hypnotizing. Like Nina taught her. Like the South taught her. Like Puerto Rico whispered to her in her sleep. Like Harlem shouted through her blood and Ireland walked behind her like a shadow.
One night, a boy leaned in close at a bar and said, “Tell me the truth. What are you?”
Kasha smiled, showing all her teeth.
“I’m Peaches, poppie.”
He laughed like it was a joke.
She didn’t.
Because the truth wasn’t something you could press into a box or a census category.
She wasn’t made to fit your mouth or your paperwork.
She wasn’t this or that.
She was both. She was neither.
She was peaches — soft, sweet, bruised, bold, impossible to fully hold.
And if you couldn’t understand that, well…you weren’t meant to taste her anyway.
One day she meet a guy. He was a handsome guy named Ray. Ray was intelligent, full on fun and laughter. But there was a side to him you could tell that was very strange and mysterious. He never exactly said where he came from or who his parents were, instead he always talked about the universality of things. He would say "we all are one and one in all".
Kasha never quite understood what that meant. She just saw him as different from the others. But something happened on this one day that changed her view of him forever and consequently her view of the world as well.
Ray had that same kind of beauty as Kasha — the kind that made people look twice, tilt their heads, and wonder. His skin was somewhere between bronze and copper, his eyes a light brown, so light they looked like bottled sunshine, and his smile came easy, like laughter had been stitched into his DNA.
But beneath all that light, there was something... strange. Not in a bad way. Not threatening. Just… off.
Whenever Kasha would ask,“So, where you from?” He’d grin and shrug. “Here. There. Everywhere.”
“Okay, but like… your people? Your family?” He’d tap his chest with his finger and say, “We all family, Peaches. One in all, all in one.”
It sounded like some hippie bullshit, but Ray wasn’t a hippie nor full of bull. He didn’t dress like one, didn’t act like one. He worked some random job in tech, went to bars, played pool, flirted too well for his own good. But when he got quiet, when he got still, something about him seemed… ancient.
Kasha wasn’t sure why she kept seeing him. Maybe it was because for once, someone wasn’t asking her to explain herself, or maybe because he laughed at her corny jokes. Maybe it was because when they kissed, it felt like gravity took a break.
One Saturday afternoon, they drove out past the city, just following the road like kids with no bedtime. They ended up at this old abandoned field behind a crumbling church. The sky wide open, clouds heavy like they might dump secrets instead of heavy rain.
“Why here?” she asked as they got out of the car. “You’ll see.”
They walked to the middle of a field, weeds brushing their knees.
Ray turned to her, suddenly serious. “Peaches… you ever feel like this world isn’t quite… real?”
She laughed. “Like The Matrix? What, you gonna tell me I been eating fake fruit all my life?”
He didn’t laugh. “I mean it. You ever feel like none of this is what it seems? Like this place… this life… it’s just one version of something bigger, something deeper?”
Kasha crossed her arms. “Ray, you sound crazy right now.” “Maybe. but you’ll understand in a minute.”
Before she could roll her eyes, he held out his hand. Palm open. There, floating — literally floating — above his skin, was a small orb of light. Pale gold, almost like the color of his eyes when the sunshine’s trough them, humming soft like a heartbeat.
Kasha stepped back. “What the hell is that?”
“Truth.”……..“Ray, stop playing.”…….“I’m not.”
The orb grew brighter, until it wasn’t an orb anymore but a swirling doorway. Colors she’d never seen before. Sounds like music and thunder and whispers all at once.
“You’re not ready for the whole truth,” Ray said, voice like it was echoing from somewhere far away. “But know this… you ain’t just Black or white or Latina. You ain’t just woman or daughter or pretty girl folks can’t figure out. You’re part of something older, bigger. same as me. same as everyone.”
“I don’t… understand.”
“You don’t have to. Not today. Just know… none of this is accidental. None of us are separate.”
The light collapsed back into his hand like it had never been there. Just a man with an open palm. Just a girl staring at him like she’d seen a ghost.
He smiled again, that easy Ray smile. “One in all, all in one.”
On the way home, Kasha didn’t say much. But later that night, staring at herself in the mirror, touching the freckles on her face like tiny maps, she whispered:
“I’m Peaches… but I might be more than that too.” For the first time, the question didn’t scare her…..”Who am I?”
She fell asleep wondering, thinking to herself in deep mediation. That morning when she awoke, she called her father and asked "dad, do you believe in angels"? He said he did but why do you ask. Kasha told her father about the day before with Ray. Her father listened carefully with stern discerning eyes and said,“that ain’t no ordinary man, baby.”
Kasha sat up straighter, phone pressed tighter to her ear. “What do you mean, Daddy?”
Her father, never one for superstition or big talk, let out a long breath. “Your grandma used to say… some people walking ‘round here look like us, talk like us, bleed like us. But they ain’t from here. Not really. Some are messengers. Some are watchers. Some are protectors. Some… just passing through.” …“You mean… like angels?”
“Could be. Could be something even older than what we call ‘angels.’ Ain’t about wings and halos. It’s about energy. About knowing things we shouldn’t know. Showing you things you can’t explain. Making you question what’s real and what’s not. That boy sound like one of ‘em.”
Kasha felt a chill slip down her back, even though the morning sun was pouring through her window.
“Daddy… why me? Why would somebody like that… come in my life?”
“‘Cause you been looking, even when you ain’t said it out loud. You been asking questions this world don’t know how to answer baby. Maybe he showed up to help you remember what you already know deep down.”
“What’s that?”
Her father chuckled softly, the way he did when she was a little girl asking why the sky was blue. “That you more than skin and hair and blood and history. You more than the labels they try to stick on you. You ain’t just Black or Latina or mixed or Peaches even. You ain’t even just Kasha. You’re light, baby. You’re spirit. You’re infinite.”
For a moment, neither of them said a word.
“Daddy…” she whispered, “do you think Ray’s even human?”
Her father thought for a long time before answering. “Does it matter? If he came to wake you up, then that’s what he came for.”
Kasha hung up feeling different. Lighter. Like something had shifted inside her. Like the edges of the world weren’t as solid as she used to think.
That day, she walked outside differently. Not as the pretty racially mixed girl everyone wondered about. Not as the girl who had to explain herself.
She walked as Peaches — soft, sweet, bruised, bold — but now something more.
Now she walked like she understood:
We are all one…..And one… is all.
And maybe, just maybe… she’d met someone who came to remind her of exactly that.
end
The Story of
Oscar and Juanita
written by: Rarmoud Ronnee
The the mystic of Salsa
"It ain't just music"
Oscar lives for the rhythm. He can hear a salsa beat from three blocks away and feel it in his bones. Music isn’t background noise to him; it’s life itself. Whether it’s a hole-in-the-wall bar in Santurce with a cracked floor and plastic chairs, or a rooftop lounge in Isla Verde where mojitos cost too much but the music flows freely, Oscar will find a dance floor. And on that floor, there’s always a fine Boricua woman — hips that speak Spanish, eyes and smiles that laugh in clave rhytm.
But it’s not just the music. It’s the way bodies speak when words aren’t enough. Salsa isn’t innocent no, not really. It’s flirtation disguised as art, seduction written in footwork. A woman leans in just close enough for him to feel the warmth of her breath without touching her lips. Her hair flows as she spins, the soft scent of chanel or coconut tracing through the air like smoke from a slow-burning candle. Fingers slide over shoulders, backs arch, sweat shines on collarbones, and smiles say what mouths never dare to.
To anyone watching from the outside, salsa looks like desire dressed in rhythm.
To Oscar, it’s home.
To Juanita, it’s betrayal waiting to happen.
Juanita doesn’t dance. Not anymore. She used to back in the day. She was the beautiful Prieta the girl everyman desired and could not keep their eyes off of. Dressed in high heel shoes with lean body fitting dresses that revealed every Boricua curve for Oscar she was the dream come true. She was not the bookworm or the quiet one. She had a lot to say and was the envy of any beautiful women anywhere. She was the girl on the block who grew up learning to stir a pot, and stir a man’s heart with her looks, her hips and her suave sexy sound. Home is where she feels alive. Cooking, flipping through pages on social media, tending to her plants, falling asleep to the hum of the fan while the coquí sing outside the window—that’s her rhythm. A Saturday night spent talking on the phone with soft music playing and candles burning low brings her peace, not longing.
They’ve been together for years now. Longer than most.
They love each other.
But they don’t understand each other.
Oscar’s mantra is simple: “It’s just dancing.”
Juanita’s suspicion is sharper: “It’s just cheating with music playing.”
Oscar says he doesn’t even get phone numbers anymore. He says it’s harmless fun, culture, cardio, a way to feel alive in a body that’s slowly aging. He says, “Babe, you know me. It ain’t like that, anymore.”
But Juanita remembers.
She remembers how he wasn’t always faithful in the past.
How the dance floor became the bar stool became the phone number became the lie.
How women’s smiles weren’t always left behind on the dance floor.
Her heart no longer trusts what her ears hear.
She knows how magnetic salsa is—not just for him, but to the girl he’s dancing with and for everyone watching. The way a woman’s body curves into the music, the way her perfume mixes with sweat and rum, the way men’s eyes follow her like she’s gravity itself—it isn’t innocent. Not to Juanita. Not anymore.
Oscar says the dance ends when the song does.
Juanita believes the consequences can last much longer.
And so, they live with the quiet lines drawn between them.
He comes home late, smelling like sweat and beer and music.
She stays home, wrapping herself in social media and silence.
Both of them lonely.
Both of them wondering if this is love… or just habit dressed up as loyalty or commitment.
end