Esmé-Michelle Watkins is an attorney from Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Indiana Review, Anomaly (formerly Drunken Boat), Word Riot, and elsewhere. She is the former Fiction Editor of Apogee and BLACKBERRY: A Magazine, and a current literary coordinator of the Mixed Remixed Literary Festival. Esmé was recently named a finalist for the Yemasse Fiction Prize (2017), and is a recipient of fellowships from the Jacob P. Waletzky Fund, Callaloo, Kimbilio, and Columbia University.
When you finished, several minutes passed before we spoke. You dipped a finger in a pool of candle wax. How could I know this was the only real secret you’d ever kept?