~~Editor’s Choice Award~~

By Alexandria Valentine

The first time I saw the world in all its ugly was the summer my daddy killed my pig. Each night, a star disappeared from the sky, leaving holes in our universe. One by one, they fell at my feet until the whole sky went dark. Before then, I believed my mother’s hands were a charm that kept all evil at bay. Her hair crept around her shoulders and her back; she pulled mine from my head in the morning. I would sit between the warmth of her legs as the comb thrummed. My father’s laughter traveled from the porch to every corner of our cabin. My sister planted yellow bells beneath the windchimes’ song. The whole house hummed until an evil was let loose from behind the cottonwood trees that left nothing untouched. Our cow dropped dead. Beetles tore holes in the cotton. Our neighbor walked to the river and never came back. The white children my mother cared for turned blue in the night. Her hands were called culprit. She wept from sunrise to sunset. My sister pulled the yellow bells from their roots. My father fell silent. As I slept, I dreamt of my teeth falling from my mouth. On the last day of summer, I woke to a black moth the size of my palm thrashing against the window. It threw its body against the screen and tried to force itself back into its old life. That night was thick with mist and the sour of wet marigolds. The cicadas screeched. Hooves drummed. A scream like lightning pierced the night’s veil. If you asked me what I saw, I’d say my mother’s neck, craning towards the earth, my father running, broad and bare-shouldered. The blink of white hoods. The stars falling around my knees. A midnight only the devil could conjure—the cottonwood tree—the dangling of feet. A white horse with eyes like two big black pools of tar. His mane fighting the wind. The window shattering. Fire leaping, painting the sky.

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Alexandria Valentine (they/she) is a writer and editor from Chicago. They earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an Emphasis in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Fine Arts at the Columbia University School of the Arts, where they received the 2019 Felipe De Alba Fellowship. Valentine is a grandchild of the Great Migration by way of Lake Village, Arkansas, and Crawford, Mississippi.