La Vonda Rochelle Staples's Page

Brian is asleep.  He has worked the last ten nights straight.  He has also spent his days working on his part-time job.  Most of you know our situation.  He can’t pay child support.  We have a child.  I can’t get an apartment in a safe and decent neighborhood.  We have made a decision to share a place until things change or until our Sarah Bear goes off to college.  Either way, this thing of ours has an expiration date.  How we spend this time of incarceration is up to us.  It’s our choice…

I get emails from all over the world.  It was no surprise when I received an email with a photo attached.  Happy, shiny Black couple beaming from the base of the Eifel Tower.  They were in Paris.  I deleted it.  Photo proof that another girl was living the dream, offered to me, but in my stubborn mind had cast to the side. 

            One cold day when I was living on the East Coast a few years ago a very good Black man came to me, out of the blue, and said, “I’m going to marry.  I’m…

Sometimes I don’t think I took enough time to think why someone selected me to be their friend, lover, or associate.  I should have.  It seems as if I was always just happy to be wanted or needed that I never questioned why.  Once in a circle, or assigned to a role, for some reason, I was determined to stay “on the job.”  I was so afraid of failure that I didn’t mind losing.  Today,  I examine opportunities and it seems as if the things freely given are those which have the greatest cost in…

It’s the end of my writing hour.  My son has just walked in.  I hear him in the kitchen and he’s eating the last of the butter burgers and hand cut fries.  He pours some tea and walks down the stairs into the basement.  Mentally, I’m checking on all of my cubs.  My mind also rests to that man, Himself, down the road.  I see him as I hope he is.  Resting.  Well.  And my good friend sleeping warm with puppy dreams dancing through his head.  I wonder if all six are well.  And I hope they will…