A woman stands on the sidewalk. She’s thinking about everything that gets snatched from the world every day: dignity, agency, lives.

Injustice festers in her stomach like stagnant air. It rises and reaches her mouth, escaping in a guttural roar.

Her scream dies. The rage—hot and sharp—does not.

Claudia Wair is a Virginia-based writer and editor. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Astrolabe, The Centifictionist, JMWW, Writers Resist, and elsewhere. You can read more at claudiawair.com, or find her on Twitter at @CWTellsTales.