Smallara

The joint burned slow between Alejandra’s fingers, the smoke curling toward the ceiling in thin, lazy ribbons. She took a long drag, her chest rising, then exhaled through her nose,…

Charity realized it halfway through.  The small dish beside her wasn’t for cleaning her hands, it was for sealing the paper. A cruel little basin of utility. Each time she…

The paper curled again.  Charity groaned, not aloud, but in that low, breathless way that lived in her chest now, where frustration couldn’t even afford the dignity of volume. Her…

Charity sat in Alejandra’s lap like a forgotten trinket, her legs curled to one side, her body dwarfed by the soft valley of fabric beneath her. The worn couch smelled…

A sickness wrapped around Charity as Alejandra carried her from the cramped bedroom. The thin walls of the dingy apartment now felt like an impenetrable fortress. Only with Alejandra could…

Charity’s body tensed as the creak of shifting bedsprings cut through the quiet. The rhythmic breathing that had filled the room like a low, steady tide faltered, then caught. A…