Patricia Smith Melton
USA
I spent hours during my youth figuring out the saying, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”  My mother said this most often when I didn’t want to iron the clothes.  Iowa summers are hot, Iowa summers ironing clothes were hotter.
It should be fun to ride a horse, shouldn’t it?  Shouldn’t everyone have wishes?
Early clashes between functional reality and visions started early for me.  It was seasoned by things in the air, such as feelings of restriction.
It took many years to realize that the energy that ran through …

Nadra Mahdi
Sudan
Everything is changed. How can she hold her baby and bring him to their community when she has no husband?
What will she say when they ask her about the baby’s father? No one will believe her. It is a strange story.
But everything that happens after that is miracle. She births the baby and a voice tells her to eat from the palm tree above her and drink from the little river under her. And when anyone asks her about her baby, she must say that she has made a …