Maya L.

Just Another California Girl

As a curator of stories, I find it’s always best to start at the beginning… My parents kinda sorta met at a KFC, and I wondered, in one of the largest metropolitan locales in the world, how did two Black people meet at a KFC for me to be here? But, that isn’t the beginning, now is it? My dad is from the South, the originator of the Civil War was his backyard, and my mom was a California wanderer. Then again, I’m avoiding the subject, and that’s unfair for me to do this to you.

Like any Black person, I’m comprised of a few parts struggle, a splash of remembrance, and as much reverence as the Universe could muster. Yet, I’m a compilation of Zora Neale Hurston’s opening lines, Audre Lorde’s gospel, Maya Angelou’s ancestral wisdom, Lorraine Hansberry’s radical tenacity, and Ntozake Shange’s feminine release.

I’m too much seeing and not enough knowing, but I’ve got this feverish desperation to deepen the latter. Maybe, one day I’ll get there. I’ve sat below the foundation of rock-bottom where a particle of light was my only guiding source out, and I’ve been kissed so deeply that I know that’s how the pyramids maintain their majesty.

I feel the most privacy lost in my city and the most sacred when I’m placing yellow flowers at my altar. I’m the richness of vanilla, the sweetness of freshly washed berries, and the bubbliness of…