Taylor Byas

Taylor Byas is a first year Creative Writing PhD student at the University of Cincinnati. She completed her Masters in English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she was a part of the reading and editing staff for both Birmingham Poetry Review and NELLE. Her work appears or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, Jellyfish Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and others.

LIPSTICK BOTTOMS (CHICAGO, IL – JULY 2008) by Taylor Byas

July 18, 2020 · Creative Nonfiction

It’s past 2 am on the southside of Chicago when my aunt Danielle, my father’s older sister, brings me and her daughter Ginai along for a late-night alcohol run. With each step, every part of my aunt ripples. Her hair is half-pressed half-shrinking from the dry summer heat. On her right thigh, clear packing tape covers a hole where she says a spider bite ate away at the flesh. I am too young to know that “spider bite” is a euphemism for an infected track mark. “Damn girl, you wore those shorts just for me didn’t you?” a white man…

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