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@edotnichole

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real ones call me E.
made in NYC. somewhere in MD.
mamí. mrs. ⚡︎ the magician ⚡︎
award-winning storyteller. towson uni writing fellow ‘26.

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“In the newness of every day until my last breath, I am devoted to you, all in and committed, knowing that I can always step completely into the home of who you are. I’m meeting the you of this moment and I vow to close the door behind me, ensuring what is past is not present in this marriage. I met five-year-old Regis and sat with him at an organ. I told him that in the end, he gets peace. That someone loved the parts another told him to keep quiet and that he is free to roam here. In his genius of thinking outside the box, someone would climb into the one he built to protect himself, and meet him there. I told him that he was safe and because he believed it, he met me at 37 and became my safety. Our entire relationship has been one of reciprocity and so I know I have meet you lifetimes before. I vow to return to you, over and over and over again. I promise to keep up my studying of you, knowing that you will continue to evolve until you reach the ultimate form of who God purposed you to be. I will read each chapter and vow to fall in love with each page, every analysis and interpretation of you, interested and invested. I promise to keep bookmarking the nerdy parts of you I love, returning to your random when you feel like you’re too much, to read out loud the part that says, “Regis, you are more than enough.” Nikki Giovanni said “Black love is Black wealth.” We may not have the riches, but we have each other, and that is a different kind of 1%…”15-minute vows(!), a day later, but yours eternally, happy anniversary, husband. by @edotnichole

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a year ago

one thing about us? when the children opt-out of the shenanigans, the big kids in us go all in. with nowhere else to run for the day, we spent the afternoon monkeying around + after DR, adding to our memory bank of unexpected encounters and unforgettable facial expressions with animals. by @edotnichole

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2 days ago

“i think the wildest thing i’ve ever chose was decide to go from two children to five overnight.”winging it as you go, praying that you get this one thing right, i hope you hold onto hearing, “can i sleep in here tonight?” week after week. you have made our home feel like a greenhouse, a place for Black boys to feel freedom in their fragility where they don’t have to force their bloom + rush into manhood. for telling a girl with the face of their biological father that they are beautiful every waking day, you took a landscape you didn’t plant + created a safe climate where they can heal their roots. this is the alchemy of chosen lineage.from directing 4 how to ride a bike, to sitting passenger side, teaching 2 how to drive, you have made real moments you dreamt of for yourself, rites of passages for young men + the man in you. for bonding with 1 over the wounds of inconsistencies + redefining presence as a permanent indwelling, to finding your face in your firstborn that made you a father + discovering that truly loving him required an inherent learning to love yourself, thank you for choosing love over biology, for being a restorative ecosystem, and an architect of safety for these children. it’s never been “bonus” or step-anything ‘round here; but it has been an active presence of you showing up everyday to pour in light and make sure five children knew they belonged wholly to the warmth you managed to create with the little soil you felt you could offer. it has been more than enough. you are enough.happy father’s day, papa bear. we love you far + wide. by @edotnichole

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a month ago

“the song, aguanilé.”i ask about a 1981 painting on the wall of a café, staring at it while he paid for our breakfast + wondering if they were orishas. the language of “yes” was expressed with an upward curve of red that bled across the border of her mouth, but no breath carried the word across the fault line. she uses those same lips to motion towards a woman sitting in the back with her daughter + calls her name. the patron comes closer + keeps with the tradition of affectionately calling us 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢 as a greeting, asking where are we from. i chart the same path in story + after telling us of loíza, 𝘷𝘦𝘫𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦 masks made of coconut husks, and 𝘭𝘢 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢 𝘥𝘦 𝘭𝘢 𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘯 𝘯𝘦𝘨𝘳𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦, she answers my question. “i could tell you it’s a picture of bomba y plena dancers, but 𝘭𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘢…”i could tell you of how we lived off of the land + baptized ourselves in the brine that miraculously cleansed the hidden aches of my muscles. we were set up with everything we needed. the value in the olfactory. learning to read the air for rain or ripened fruit in our backyard. resourcefulness over excess. natives as human landmarks on how to survive + how to slow the pace. community as a safety net, not solely as social circle. how to surrender our schedules to the positioning of the sun + moon, the tides as the arbitrator of the day. coordinates of how to maneuver news once we returned.i took a geography course this past semester as part of a core requirement, knowing i put it off long enough. i pick up more than i thought, naming estuaries, barrier islands + passive coastlines on the ascent + descent of our flight. between jokes on paying more attention in class than attributed is the gravity that our relationship has always centered on land. our first talk on his folk fighting in a war in exchange for freedom in virginia two years after america’s “independence.” him discovering the hand that drew my family‘s oldest boundary in the 1790s in the branching of our online ancestral grove. i enrolled in the class at the right time actually; we took this trip when we needed to.the island is an oracle. by @edotnichole

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2 months ago

we stayed in san juan for just a few hours before the three and a half hour drive to seclusion in rincón. with no itinerary other than to “find the pink building; no, i don’t know the exact name, there are pink houses everywhere,” we arrived later than usual, cutting opportunities for exploration short. so how do you fill gaps of lost time? do delays empty a day out or does it simply force us to look at unexpected spaces with the same vivid attention we give the destination?a lingering dinner + drinks later, the walk back to a short-term studio in the city brought a new kind of delay the night before—wait out a sudden downpour or surrender to the night + get soaked. in lieu of prioritizing sleep or calculating dry patches of pavement akin to a game of frogger, we threw the makeshift umbrella of a cross colours hoodie over our heads + consciously chose childhood instead. and we cracked up at the ways our knees buckled at the weight of nearing 40 over puddles, of how heavily we carried things before this moment. sodden white chucks to dry overnight + a belly expanded in fullness from laughter than food, the introduction proved time hadn’t been lost after all. more than traveling without our children, we also left our youthfulness behind to eventually return to. this was the point of the hold up all along; to go back to where it all begins.when we were met with unobstructed skies the next day, we allowed ourselves to wander streets that would have otherwise gotten us in trouble 35 years ago. we found the structure easily; oddly, a clear path, in what felt like a reward for learning how to play in the dark without straining our vision. and then, we ventured one direction west to see everything—each other, ourselves, our marriage, and home—differently. forward… by @edotnichole

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2 months ago

“If they say we don’t exist, that they can’t see us anywhere except rotten corners, in perverse bodies, how come I can see you and hold you and you’re holy; how come I can love you and home you and you’re there, in flesh, in my mind, in my blood; how come I keep waking up in this love and feel rested? What else to do now then, when a love like this finds you? What else but praise? What else but dance?” — Eloghosa Osunde by @edotnichole

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2 months ago

it’s funny the last time either of us were here. 9 years for him; 10 years + a month for me. the oddity of what happens in between the then + now. when we talked about where to honeymoon, we thought of the integration of the beginning of two ends, with our marriage purposed as the end of the beginning. not lost on us, the groundwork of what was established in the formative years of former lives helped cement the roots to tackle the fruit + meat of this experience. driving along the coast to the west, i can still identify through my gut certain spots that i felt connected to the first time on the island leading up to my father’s place of birth in vega alta. random roads, the lining of palm trees along the street, and pulling up photos from a decade ago, locations line up. “how’d you know that + you been here once?” spirit will never let you forget…but we proposed the question, how do we see the land differently with a new lens this time around? land in the self as newly turned soil? the terrains of a relationship? in 2016, my hair was falling out from the weight of stress; in 2026, cut + colored, my own doing, an attraction to my husband. candidly, he captures me to answer the inquiry. at 39, who we see is not who was at the end of the adult adolescence of our twenties or the entrance of the thirties.“you are looking at everything else + i just want to see you so that you can see yourself.” by @edotnichole

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2 months ago

446 days with 16 undergraduate + one graduate course in between, five FTKs, and a “I know you better cancel that summer class” later, we present, a delayed honeymoon. by @edotnichole

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2 months ago

Andreal N. Beckett, M.S.N., APRN AGACNP(-BC*), R.N., CEN.two years ago you called me from the emergency department that birthed our sisterhood + your voice cracked at the news. for a more than a moment, you put your title down + held your breath saying the words. someone’s addiction had won. i hadn’t realized until then how much i put the trope of Black women being the strongest onto you. there was no way something broke beyond the bones of my big sister. Reeg + i ran to the car, unopened dinner left behind, and flew 30 miles south to get to you. and then what i’d never thought i’d see happened—you finally let it all go. you cried. you were human. the person who cared for others for close to 20 years needed care themselves. to be on the other side of rescuing, i wondered who saves you. life is funny in that way…“i don’t think i’m meant to be a nurse anymore.” those lies almost won. in a reminder that the quality of your support matter more than the quantity, somehow? you kept going. worked in one state, clinicals in another, going back home to see the structures that served as your crutches back to health in a third. watching your location because we were “family nearby” you worked 24s across critical care units + in trauma. you? with God’s grace + your family’s push, your foreparents’ resilience, you nursed yourself back to healing. you 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 meant for this. twenty years of nursing. 20,000+ miles across three states for a masters. your tears that night, these years, did not drown your dreams. you are your ancestors’ exhale.you 𝘸𝘰𝘯. you mastered it. for your inspiration, thank you. for asking me in ‘22 what’s next + leading the way yourself, you are why best friends are the best example. who would’ve thought the chaos of an ER could bring such peace in a friendship like this. congratulations, nik. we love you. by @edotnichole

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2 months ago

take two, year two. “you’re going to miss the noise in that house when it’s just you two left.” my mother swears by this + while i feel differently in 2026, there are times when i can see it as a possible. in glimpses when Kaevon tells me he + Kamryn are going out for the day. when Ellington + Langston are away during the week. when Kairie has on headphones + is satisfied in their own world. a praying mother, pleads of protection + covering passed down from my own mom + hers. her ma + her mama. her mother. emancipated women. enslaved women. the hope that silent offerings are heard in the quiet. something has to fill the spaces where there were once bodies.there are times where i can see it as a possible. what happens when the conversations, heated moments, and “you don’t get it, ma” start to fade + become memories that once were? when the custom cards of elementary school you really kept all them years begin to lose their vibrancy + the handwriting of first names is more legible these days in comparison to the wobbling of letters from yesteryear? the voices in the iphone 5 videos change. you bear witness to the height differences you marked in pencil at the doorway. the ways their facial structures reshape itself + hair become visible in places reserved for men. the way you are reminded of your generation’s fashion when your daughter tells you knee high socks + wide leg jeans are the fashion 𝘯𝘰𝘸. it’s fast paced. it happens whether or not you’re ready for it. a part of me is ready to start letting them go—one by one to see who they will continue to be. 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 excites me. not to identify who’s more of what parent, but to recognize the ways my mothering showed up in personalities + purpose.that is legacy. this is how i live. there is no other life i would have chosen if it meant i wouldn’t have them.happy mother’s day to those who celebrate in the land of the living + sending love to all grieving having experienced loss in this lifetime. by @edotnichole

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2 months ago

the last lap of the 3rd decade. i looked at a photo of myself nine years ago on this day; tired. on my way to work. winging it + wondering. unsure of what the next 10 years would bring. there were things i could foresee, but not quite honest with myself on how the vision would manifest. how i would make it out. how we would we survive. how i would live, in general. there were things i could not see at all because of the closure of my twenties. a silly me to think the decisions of an elder adolescent was conclusive. that God would leave it be right where i was.everything that did not come with me into my thirties, i am leaving with. all the things that i thought would take me out, have withered away in my revival instead. what was involuntarily taken from me in my twenties + in my early thirties, God restored in this latter half. no one’s program, pettiness, or personal feelings about me was bigger than that plan. i did not see any of this for myself, but i’m thankful that someone’s prayers saw + sought more for me. i’m full from the knowing that what was fatal, was not final. every word of the year from 30 to 39 was intuitive + intentionally-crafted. i entered the decade this crying about not feeling valued because i didn’t finish school. the gag? living life was the lesson this whole time. i’m closing with a rejoice of being awarded a writing fellowship, the acceptance of a grad school program by way of a child that changed my educational + life trajectory (@thepamelafuller, thank you for letting me love on your baby), and the full acceptance of who i am—mom of three turned five, a wife (@iammaestroreeg, thankful for how you shifted all i thought i knew of love), a friend, and a domestic violence survivor.this is the last of so many things + yet, just the beginning…a blessed 39th it will be. așè.mua: @konfidentlook. by @edotnichole

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3 months ago

My love,Thank God you are here. Through all the stripes, injustice, and vexation, He saw fit for you to be here. Another year. Unscathed. And so wise. I love how you rally around your friends, especially those who need a brash but caring word. And so I say:God, thank you for another year of life for my wife. Thank you that you have kept her through storms and dangers of the world and the troubles that she didn’t know were there. Thank you for your soothing spirit coming to her like a sweet, smelling vapor. May she continue to strive to where you want her to be. As I look across the table from her, I thank you that she looks so good and doesn’t look like what she’s been through. Continue to keep her mind. Let her praises to You continue to rise like incense and her prayers like an evening offering. Thank you that no weapon prospered. Thank You that her prophetic word, like Deborah. That she touches others. Keep her mind as she deals with these 5 kids. May she have the patience of Job. And God, continue to bless our marriage. Let us continue to draw closer to each other. Let us keep you in our marriage and others who don’t genuinely bless us, out. May you grant it so. Amen. I love you. I honor you. Happy birthday, mi amor. by @edotnichole

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