As an artist, my goal is to write stories that reflect the beauty of my ancestry, and of my family, a beauty that my people never see reflected. My goal is to take the characters I know, the figures of my mother and brother and cousins, and show them to the world, in their joy and their love, and the unique structures and moments and language of being Black, and send them through my writing into the hearts of others. I start every story with the full intention of creating something pure and happy, something that fills me with true delight. Beginning with these characters and this intention, I write until I reach an ending. The problem is, the endings are never happy. I’m interested in the real lives of people, demonstrated in elevated ways; in the slow deconstruction and reconstruction of families, in the moments of love and success and failure and shame, in representing characters and emotions onstage in a way that is understandable. I’m not interested in pipe dreams. Though I start every story with the intention of a happy ending, the moments around me, the news and the world, don’t write happy endings for Black folks. But my hope is that one day they will, and I will keep writing until I can find myself an ending where we live happily ever after.