Fiction
Marielle’s sisters and cousins were all born with judgment in their mouths, always throwing stones at women who stepped out of line or into the fire. No one asked her questions, not with words at least, but they gave her the business in other ways.
I was coasting along like every other rudderless late adolescent…My particular drift happened to be tied to a disability I had yet to face, and it would be a while still before I finally found my footing.
I regard myself in the mirror he holds up. It is spring, but damp here in Venice. The necklace lies on my blue sweater like fire.
At Free Oaks, I perched in the laps of transient poets and tugged at the robes of bilingual maharishi, collecting nuggets of enlightenment like stones.
Everywhere you looked, you would see an unending flood of traffic, with sirens flashing and horns blaring and drivers yelling, and through the taxi’s open windows you would smell the stench of gasoline exhaust and cigarette fumes hanging in the air.
Lillian tried to forget through silence, and though she could hide the facts from herself, she didn’t know how to keep the fears away.
Luis unscrews a small bottle of puro and daubs Tio’s smiling mouth. In the still air, the pure alcohol makes Luis’s eyes water.
Further down, he hears the deep-throated cough of a detonation. He heads toward it.
Now her praying to the clouds sounded stupid because I was old enough to know that nothing and no one would ever be descending. And old enough to know, something had broken in my mother’s backbone forever.
Something happens to people that rescue other people, a covenant of sorts… The promise is the same: when I see you, I will keep you safe. I looked at Mariko, the quasar of freckles between her eyes, and that promise was made.