Tongue of Fire

A prince steps into the heat of forced labor, asking why bodies limp and bleed. Dust watches him with a worker’s clarity: he can leave the furnace; they cannot. Heat reveals the cost of asking questions in a world built to silence them.

Chapter 8, “Salt and Spin,” returns to a story we think we know and looks closer. Dust steps into the moment where a mother’s courage was misread as disobedience, revealing the truth hidden beneath the old narrative. This chapter reframes what really happened—and why it matters.

In “Brushfire,” something sparks at the edge of Dust’s vision and refuses to fade. A voice flickers low in the brambles, calling Dust forward before she’s ready. Deliverance bends, burns, and asks questions no map can answer. One step, then another—the fire is speaking.

“Broken Levees” threads together Sumerian floods, New Orleans trauma, and the quiet disasters we inherit. Dust witnesses who gets the boat and who gets the blame, how levees crumble long before they break, and why resilience is never as simple as staying afloat.

In The Tower, Dust begins to take human form and steps into the story she’s been watching unfold. As humanity reaches upward, building monuments to its own ambition, the foundations begin to crack. This chapter marks the moment when creation forgets its source—and Dust learns what it means to be both matter and memory.

In Remembered by Dust: Blood Offering, love, faith, and fear blur together on the mountain. Through Dust’s eyes, we revisit the story of sacrifice and obedience—and begin to ask what it means to lay the knife down and choose love instead.

When white denial slips, the truth burns through. This essay is a reflection on racism, silence, and the cost of looking away. The veil has fallen. What once softened the truth now lies in the dirt. When I became an educator, I caught my first glimpses behind the veil that white America has long employed to pretend we were living in a post-racist world. Until then, I could, if I chose, dismiss echoes of hate as jokes, misunderstandings, or euphemisms. Racial violence didn’t h

This post is being published on what much of the country still calls Columbus Day—a day that reminds us no one is illegal on borrowed land. It’s also a day to decide what kind of American one chooses to be: obedient or awake, fearful or free. As protests rise again, I’m writing about how peaceful resistance protects truth, community, and our collective calm.