[FICTION] Still Me
I hate her.
She real smart, and she real pretty too. Got that personality that attracts people like magnets. She always walkin’ around, with her head held high, and her hips swayin’ from left to right.
She real smart, and real pretty too. She be answerin’ questions real fast, and she know how to do algebra. I ain’t never learned how to do that. She got real nice eyes, they green, an’ I watch them glisten when she be writin’ them real nice poems. And she got soft hair, the kind you just want to run your fingers through when you layin’ down.
She real nice, and real quiet too. I hear her hummin’ in class, and her voice is nice, like the birds that be on my window in the morning. And she quiet, but her words are loud, an’ they always mean something real special.
I like that.
But I hate her.
Why she gotta make me fall in love? Imma girl, I ain’t supposed to love her like that. My mama said that wasn’t natural, girls likin’ girls, boys likin’ boys, that kinda thing. She said them gays some different kinda evil. She swore that them kinda people go to hell, and I ain’t tryna make my God no kinda angry.
Why she gotta make me fall in love? She be hangin’ out with all those boys that only want her for her body. I feel bad, cause she ain’t the person that deserve that mess. I could tell she real innocent, an’ she a church girl. Momma would like that, but that don’t change nothin’.
I wish I wasn’t like this. Before I open my eyes each mornin’, I pray that I’m in a new body. But I wake up, the sun still strugglin’ to rise, the smell of buttery biscuits in my nose, the crackling of sausage in the grease pan, an’ I’m still a girl.
“Delilah, get up out this bed,” mama said, tugging the covers off my body. Goosebumps rose up real quick, but the air was warm and stiff.
Yulani Fagan is a sophomore attending Classical Magnet School, located in Hartford, Connecticut.