May 17, 2019
You and Me, Bird
Your near-life experiences have coalesced in this momentary identity. You are a woman speeding along I-10 with a caged green-cheeked conure chirping by her side.
Your near-life experiences have coalesced in this momentary identity. You are a woman speeding along I-10 with a caged green-cheeked conure chirping by her side.
When you disappeared, three nights ago, I told them you were up north, visiting your mother. Why should I tell them different?
I decide to put the plant in the ground the next time we stop, to insist that something I’ve loved will survive me.
They tell me that my new job is to chisel a deep and lasting crack into the foundation of American democracy.
The man in the fur hat warned me things might be different after we crossed the time barrier—that my presence might confound, even frighten those who’d forgotten me.
Her mother had never curved a cool hand around Marilinda’s cheek and promised, Mijita, your life will be swollen with love.
“I don’t believe in ghosts, but you have a reputation for helping troubled properties.”
I knew how these small moments could accumulate over time, threading back to one another, changing how you behaved in the world.
The day the women left, Clary followed her mother to the water’s edge. She would’ve followed her under, too, if the other daughters hadn’t been there to hold her back.
There are times you have legs. Mostly, you do not. You smile with teeth grown sharp from gnawing at chains that refuse to release.
Floating on her back, she imagines what’ll happen if she starts bleeding right then and there.
On this train ride back to his beginnings, Shettima’s mind overtook the train to another river in his memory, a river long and meandering as his days.
I started to wonder how the hell she’d found me after all these years, but I was starting to realize that any chicken with the amount of determination I was seeing now would hardly be deterred from tracking me down.
She has taken back a vintage Pac Man pinball machine, gold teeth, and hair extensions. She has taken back virginity and faith in God. But can she take something back from the shadow of a woman she loved?
Of course there was no best. Of course they were the same. I wanted to win in any case.
When it was over, Myrrh clapped as much for their own feat of love as for their partner’s artistic accomplishment. They were proud and pleased—and then came the man who sang “The Music of the Night.”
She knew this could happen. It was, after all, the way things were. The promise of Rekha’s warmth buried it.
Didn’t they get it? She was a pitch pine. She would win in the end.
Her species procreates through a sacred sermonic skin grafting ritual, but the idea of sex with a teenage human male she found truly grotesque.
“Devilish,” said all of Kharagpur, after the Rosarios and their pig walked in the annual parade. “No pig’s supposed to jump backwards. Or laugh.”
