I’ve spent years carrying these characters around in my head. It only feels right to finally introduce you to one of them. Meet Phoenix.

The playlist that lives in her car. The one that plays when she is trying not to feel something. Throwbacks, some R&B, one song she pretends she doesn’t have memorized.

The ones that made me a reader before I knew I was a writer. Toni Morrison. Eric Jerome Dickey. Sister Soulja. Kennedy Ryan. Zane. Omar Tyree. Maya Angelou. The shelf that started everything.