Hi, I'm Lovar Burton and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

In every episode I hand-pick a different piece of short fiction and read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

I wanted to read today's story for a couple of reasons.

I've talked a lot lately about grief and loss because it just feels very relevant to where we are as a society right now.

We've all lost so much and we seem to just want a muscle past it, move on.

And personally it's helpful for me to read stories about that process of grieving.

Or black thereof.

So maybe together we can figure out how to do it better.

But I also just really felt seen by this story.

It's about a black family whose matriarch, their grandmother, has just passed and now the family is going through the rituals of putting her house back in order, preparing it for new life.

They're reshuffling the family order and obligations.

My own mother passed away about five years ago so I really felt that part of it.

But I also just really enjoyed and recognized the voices of these people, the aunts and uncles, the grandkids.

Maybe you recognized them too.

The story is dragonflies and it's part of Shannon Sanders new collection entitled company out now from Grey Wolf Press.

It's an interconnected collection about the lives and lore of one black family.

Shannon Sanders is a writer and attorney based in the DC area and her work has won the Penn, Robert J. Dow short story prize and been published in one story,

try quarterly, joy land, electric literature, slice and strange horizons.

And now if you're ready to jump in let's take a deep breath.

And begin dragonflies by Shannon Sanders.

After the service, Lulu's mother, Adrian, working her position as the eldest daughter of the deceased, ordered everyone back to the house to deal with the dragonfly situation.

...