Mj Pettengill

I keep my 'darlings' tucked away. I do not kill them entirely.

It was hard to believe that my feet were on the same earth where Mamma’s feet once were. I wondered if the earth would have known that...

They would take you out and beat you senseless if they found you hidin’ in a car. I only got caught once, and that was enough for me.

With this new-found freedom came the challenges of women working for pennies a day while boosting a handful of already influential families

I longed for the time when God shined His candle about my head as in the days of my youth.

We continue to pass along the grief and pain of those before us, and in time, forget their origins. We inherit their losses.

When we finally summon the courage to view our past, we may awaken from our troubled dreams.

I reached towards the wreckage of my whole existence.

The practice of auctioning the poor is a form of indentured servitude, a custom in this country that dates back to the first settlers...

You can be a strong force within yourself, family, and community without raising an angry fist.

Buried deep in the bones of the earth, in dusty, misplaced archives, and scribbled in faded, yellowed diaries, their stories exist.

There was light there, in the homeland of old stories, but not enough. I had been there too long.

Where was God when it happened?

Reaching into the corners of uncertain blackness, I saw the dimmest light, that of a dying candle. It was enough to almost blind me.

That sacred site is an archetypal and genealogical vault filled with memories intended to be forgotten...

Her dress was nothin’ more than a collection of scraps held together by a thread that was about to let go.

I wasn’t the boy they wanted me to become. I was still me, one of them.

I was forgotten before the ink dried; there would be no wastin’ of tears.

I come before You, meek and lowly in heart...

What I saw didn’t make sense. I could have sworn that she walked straight into the water, nearly up to her waist. My heart pounded.