Huitzitzilin

Issue 41 • Spring 2020 • Fiction

Don’t speak to me, I say to them, my lips against their ears. It’s more than I can bear, to speak when I am naked and you are here, your words falling forever inside me. 

Kiss me, touch me, hold me, I say, bite me, taste me, pinch me, fuck me, but don’t talk to me. 

I am most myself in the dark, naked and not alone. 

What I loved was the loss of gravity. And the hands that held me. Spun me. Caught me. The hands at my waist that pulled me, pushed me. Their bodies emanating heat. The brush of chest, breast, thigh. Hard arms holding me so close, so tight I thought my spine would leave an imprint on their chests. I loved the lights spinning dizzily, the rhythmic throbbing beat driving my body across the floor, the music bursting under my skin. 

No more. The open space in my living room measures ten feet by twelve. I dance in silence, reconstructing forgotten songs, straining against myself. No spinning. No dangerous spill of intricate footwork. No sudden sharp turns of my hips. I’m constrained to slow circles, half-steps and lowered arms, dancing on my heels so as not to risk my balance. I can’t afford to lose myself. 

When I am alone, I am always a little lost. Inside, I am spinning, spinning. Unable to find North. 

They came to sip at my eyes—a cacophonous cloud of iridescence. Bright bodies hurtling with stillness. Searing reds. Flashing blues. Black so black it reflected the light of dawn. So beautiful I wanted to touch them. Wanted to stand in the midst of all that humming, that spinning. Wanted to embrace their invisible limbs, the invisible air they made viscous, visible. 

Waves of tiny shimmering bodies flung me to the ground. Covered me. I cried out and raised my arms. Too many. I beat them away but more came. The sound of all their vibrating bodies so loud against my skin. My bones shivered against my own flesh, blood trembling inside my veins. My heart seized. They held my eyes open. Their almost translucent tongues unfurled, laying grooved edges across the whites of my eyes. Piercing pain. Hot and jagged. But their wings were soft beating against my face. 

Flickering colors and guttural sounds drinking deep, drawing the nectar from my eyes, my body. Drinking my memories. My caresses. My soft dreams, my lost tears. Trickling moments of tenderness brought up from the soles of my feet, from the tips of my fingers. They drank deep. Drank the honeyed darkness coiled in the center of my heart. Everything sweet devoured. 

I lay bleeding on the ground, watched the bright-winged creatures flicker away through a descending darkness. 

It was morning. I’d gone to the park to watch the sun rise. I never saw it set. 

I can’t describe how the night is different. The absence of the weight of daylight on my skin. In the night, we shed our clothing, our daylight selves. Shedding blindness, shedding helplessness. I shed the woman who risks her life crossing the street, the woman who counts her steps, the woman who is always afraid. 

I know the night. Light and shadow entwined. What it hides. What it reveals. The yearning that lives that burns that builds just underneath the skin. That drives us toward each other, collapsing the infinite spaces between strangers. I know the language of flesh, the first words spoken over skin, the sigh as mouth meets mouth as limbs entwine as flesh sinks into flesh. The gasps of arching backs. Touch translating need. 

This is when I think the hummingbirds have nested inside me, their quick breaths my harsh panting. The tintinnabulation of their tiny hearts thundering deep inside me. Their heat flashing through me. I sip the shadows from their necks. Musk on the tip of my tongue. Their scent and mine rolling over my skin. The slapping and pounding of flesh against flesh. Even in the dark there is the pulsing of tiny flickering flares. Curls of heat licking at my spine. Sweetness in them all. I drink and drink. Left breathless and spent. 

—I love you, Xochitl, let me take care of you. Come live with me, or I can live here with you. 

—Not this again, Jorge. You take care of me enough. 

—All I do is put money in your account. I want to be here to cook for you and drive you and be with you. Just you and me. 

—Ay, Jorge, I would drive you crazy in a week. You need someone who needs you all the time. I like being alone most of the time. I like doing things for myself. 

—But I want to do those things for you— 

—Which is why we’d never work. Whatever happened with that daughter of your mother’s cousin’s coworker’s friend? 

—My mother’s neighbor’s daughter? That’s why I haven’t gone to go see my mother. I think they’re trying to ambush me. 

—Ay, don’t be like that. Go meet the girl. You’re the kind of man that needs a home and a wife and some little babies. I’m not that woman, so get that out of your head. What I’m good at is this— 

—Xochitl! 

—Shut up already. Come here. 

I live alone. A small apartment. They tell me its walls are white and its ceilings vaulted. Six hundred and twenty square feet. My bed is in the exact center of my bedroom. I dislike stretching my legs or my arms and hitting a wall. One small nightstand to my left. One chair by the window. I like to sit there and feel the breeze. Six steps exactly to the door from the foot of the bed. Bathroom to my left. Washer and dryer in a closet to my right. Eight steps to an L-shaped combination dining and living room. Clockwise- a stone mosaic table for two. Two director’s chairs, one on either side. A sofa large enough to stretch out in. A ceramic statue of a woman bearing a water jug on her back. The ceramic feels porous and cool but alive under my fingers. Two blooming jasmines by the windows. The door. A narrow mahogany table. A plush rocker recliner. An expanse of wall. Kitchen to my left. 

There are no knickknacks anywhere. No heap of old newspapers. No coffee table and no cozy lamp-lit corners. No books and no television. The walls would be bare, but I couldn’t bear the thought of such a pale, pale living space. My sister brought paintings. Abstract whirlwinds of vivid colors, she said. I often feel the raised slaps, whirls, and dashes of paint with my fingers. When everything is still and quiet, it seems to me the walls grow warm. That the paint begins to move. Kaleidoscoping colors escape the canvases, streaming from one wall to the next, one room to another. Not the sound of water running. A thicker, deeper sound. 

Such heat in his lips, such tenderness in his touch. I imagine his eyes are often shot through with light. Under my fingers, his hair feels golden. I trace his features over and over as if by dint of sheer repetition his face will come alive in my mind. As if I could make myself remember what I have never seen. 

Jorge loves to be straddled. Loves to hold my breasts in his hands as I move. Loves to lie on his stomach and have me massage him while straddling his thighs. I measure myself against him. He is only slightly taller. I stretch myself against his back. His fingers barely reach further than mine. Powerful shoulders and arms and a rippling back. How I love to smooth my fingers against the small of his back, the firmness of his buttocks, down to powerful thighs and calves, his small broad feet. Everywhere a light dusting of curls for my fingers, for my lips. He makes sounds like a tamed wild cat, purring and growling, hissing. He loves to lay his head on my lap, loves to have me brush my fingers through his golden curls. 

Ramon is nothing like Jorge. Long and lean, his limbs are an eternity to my hands. Wiry muscles taut over his bones. Elegant narrow feet and hands. His face seems sad to my hands. Deep eyes. They have to be dark. Have to be shadowed. He loves to hold me beneath him. Loves to stretch my limbs until the muscles protest. Loves sex against walls and on tables. Loves to wrap himself in my long hair. Loves that I don’t love him, don’t need him beyond this darkness. Loves knowing that if he never returned I’d never pine after him. That if he said goodbye, I’d never set my body against his like an anchor, crying out his name as he walked away. And yet he loves that I never turn him away. 

One is day. One is night. One is earth and one is sky. I taste one and sip the other. Drink one and devour the other. 

And then there is Mercedes. Only Mercedes is allowed to spend the night, to bathe with me, to cook in my kitchen. I don’t know what she tells her husband or her children when she is with me. I don’t ask. I long to bite at her throat, to leave purple marks on her soft thighs, but I restrain myself. She trusts me, and she isn’t mine. She holds her fingers to my lips when her cell phone rings. Her body goes from hot and pliable to cold and rigid as she turns away from me. A voice I don’t recognize emerges from her. After she hangs up the phone, I take her feet in my hands, warm them, running my fingers along the instep. Press my palms hard against the arch of her feet. Slowly, she melts, returns to me. I neither drink nor devour her. I breathe her. I inhale and exhale Mercedes.

I can’t forget their wings. How did they mistake my eyes for blossoms? Violet sabrewings. Lucifer hummingbirds. Broad billed hummingbirds. I saw them once, long ago, visiting a friend who lived just south of Tucson. What were they doing here, a thousand miles away from their path of migration? 

Sometimes, lying in the dark, I think I can hear them. Even inside my bedroom with its closed windows. I make myself take deep breaths. Make myself sit up slowly. Move my head slowly from side to side, trying to pin down the tiny sound of humming wings. I reach out in slow arcs, methodically tracing the air around me. Something swoops by my ear, hits my left hand. I recoil. Where is it? I rise to my feet, wildly flailing my arms around. The sound grows louder. Louder in every direction. I feel wings brush against my cheek and cover my eyes with my hands. Stumble around the corner of the bed. Fall to my knees and bury my face against the mattress. Buzzing sounds against my back. They fly into my hair looking for my eyes. You cannot have them, I say, you cannot have anything else of mine. 

No medical reason. On other days, I would have beat my head against the wall until the light pierced my eyes. Five years since that morning and the specialists still can’t tell me why I’m blind. Everything is as it should be, they said. They sent me to a psychologist. What was there to say? I could never tell anyone about the hummingbirds. They would think I was crazy. I only told my sister. Even she said it made no sense. Hummingbirds are the spirits of warriors who fell in battle, the spirits of women who died in childbirth. Servants of Huitzopochtli, the god of war. I don’t know why they would seek me out. I am no warrior. The only thing I have ever fought is this darkness. And solitude. 

—Ramon, wake up. You’re having a nightmare. Ramon. 

—Lorena? Lorena? 

—No, Ramon, it’s Xochitl. You fell asleep. Ramon, you’re hurting my arm. 

—Ay, I’m sorry, Xochitl. I thought you were—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you— 

—It’s okay. I’m okay. You were shouting in your sleep. Here, drink some water. 

—What was I saying? 

—You kept saying the same thing, over and over, but you were getting louder. 

—What was I saying? 

—No, Lorena, no. Over and over again. 

—I’m so sorry I woke you, Xochitl. 

—Don’t be. I wasn’t sleeping. I was waiting for you to wake up for round two. 

After the hummingbirds, I cut my long hair. Tossed my lipsticks and nail polishes and makeup, my heels and my purses and most of my clothes. Abandoned my books, my photo albums, the hundred mementos of my life. Refused to see old friends after the first few awkward visits. I gave up my apartment and went to live with my sister for two years. Months spent lying sleeplessly in bed. Spent cursing my life, my eyes. She bought me simple clothing. Drawstring black pants to wear and solid colored tee shirts she embroidered so that I could tell them apart. It hardly mattered. Like a wooden doll, I sat for hours. Remembering and refusing to remember. None of my memories belonged to who I had become. Even my name was no longer mine. I forgot how the world was tied together. How things in the world stood apart from each other. 

I was afraid I’d forget what colors meant. I made a map for myself: my mother’s casket—white. My hair—black. The fringed leaves of the mesquite—green. The dress my mother made for me when I was seven—yellow. The color of the sky the day I slept by the lake’s edge—blue. The night sky at the southern horizon—purple. Blood—red. I found memories for fifty other colors. I clenched my fists, holding the memory of colors so close, they seeped through my fingers. Reduced to flashes, reduced to whirs, reduced to whimpers. 

I have memories of photographs. I trace and retrace my features trying to remember what I look like. Am I different now? Time runs, runs through itself, runs through me. The minutes would last an eternity if there wasn’t breathing to tend to, heartbeats to count, my eyes that still require blinking. Outside, I am too occupied negotiating through a large unknown. Inside the unknown unfolds. Extends. Deepens. When I’m alone, the unknown closes in around me, presses down on me, steals my breath. I forget where the doors are and stumble against furniture legs, misjudge the width of doors, have to force myself to stop, breathe, begin again. 

Do they know? Sometimes in the night, when one of them lies beside me, I want to cling to them, want to press my lips against their shoulders, want to weep and say, don’t go. Want to say, don’t leave me alone. Hold me, I want to say. Keep me from falling apart. Give the darkness shape. Texture. Make a path for me through the days. 

But I stay silent. That is not what I am for. Not what they are for. 

There are others. Sweet Xian with her exquisite mouth, who gasps tiny gasps when she comes. Roel, who says I remind him of his wife. She is a thousand miles away. He comes to me when he misses her past bearing. I let him call me by her name. Jeremy who is the only one who cannot pronounce my name. So-shee, he says. I do not hold it against him. He is so young I still smell the milk of his skin. 

I don’t want to need anyone. So I stay silent. I press myself against Jorge’s side, grab the curls above his neck and nip his earlobes. I rake my nails down Ramon’s back and offer him my neck when he lunges after me. I reach with my hungry hands, my hungry limbs for Mercedes. Taste and taste and taste Xian and Roel and Jeremy. I will make heat of it all. My loneliness made into lust. My not knowing. My fear. My long hours. With them and in the dark I am still beautiful. Their hands make me real. Their mouths make me solid. And so we begin again and again until it is ended and I can close my eyes and the darkness is absolute and I can sleep. 

—You won’t ever ask me to leave them—to leave him—will you? 

—No, Mercedes, no. I’m here whenever you need me. And when you don’t, you don’t even have to think about me. 

—But I’m always thinking about you. I’m always counting down the days and the hours. I pick up and put down the phone half a dozen times every day because I want to hear your voice, because I want to make you laugh. Do you know where I tell him I go? 

—Where? 

—I tell him I need time to write. That I’m working on a novel. That I need time away from him and the boys to concentrate. I used to write a long time ago, when we met in college. 

—What do you do when he asks to see what you’re writing? 

—I tell him no, that I’ll show him when I’m done. But just in case, I meet up with this young woman in her twenties, a single mother working two jobs and writing a novel. I pay her for her drafts and then I take them home and file them carefully away. In case I ever need them. 

—Smart. A paper trail. 

—It’s how I get this time with you. Though every other weekend isn’t enough. But I can’t do this more often. 

—Well, then, we better make this time count. No more talking. 

That night, I dreamt them all. Ramon, Jorge, Mercedes, Xian, Roel, Jeremy. I could see them, in a circle around me, and I was spinning and spinning, facing one and then another. Their faces were brightly lit, as if they were looking at a sun whose brightness I couldn’t see, whose warmth I couldn’t feel. And there was a humming everywhere around us that made my bones vibrate inside my flesh. I wanted to get away from it. And then I realized it was coming from inside me. I was spinning and spinning, all of their faces blurring. But even in the dream, I knew it wasn’t about stopping and choosing one of them. I was the needle of the compass, spinning and spinning, because I couldn’t feel North. 

Without North, there was no East, no West, no South. 

They were waiting for me to give them direction. 

My sister believed it was a matter of finding the right doctor, taking the right test. But the months went by. I had to learn how to walk, how to count my steps, how to eat, how to listen, how to read, how to use a cane, how to negotiate my way through the darkness. But finally, I had to leave and make a life to replace the one that was gone. My sister couldn’t understand. I was dissolving. The contours of my body fading into the shadows. Hardly hungry. Hardly feeling. A lost thing that was not a woman. I lost weight until all of my bones protruded. Calluses on my feet. My dry skin peeling and cracking. My eyes swollen from tears. No job. No friends. Unable to dance and no longer beautiful. I left to save what was left of myself. 

I chose this city because I’d never lived here. Because though I’d never see it, this city had a wide river and trees everywhere. Because it was a real city with buses and sidewalks where I didn’t have to be driven everywhere. I learned this city with the end of my cane. 

I threw away my tee shirts and drawstring pants. Grew my hair long again, black and water straight. Brushing it is only a matter of time and attention, taking it in sections. I can’t wear very much makeup, but I can wear some, using my fingers as my guide. Light colors on my lips, dark shadows on my eyelids. Moisturizers. No way to know if there are circles under my eyes. I bought my clothes by feel. How my body felt moving inside them. Trusted salesgirls to choose the colors. Chose which salesgirls to listen to by feeling out the timbre of their voices. 

I didn’t know what I was looking for. But I found it in this city. I learned my little neighborhood how many steps, street crossings, and curbs there were from my apartment to the grocery store, the bank, the post office, the coffee shop. Ramon and I met soon after I arrived. Jorge a few months later. Mercedes a year ago. The others in the last six months. 

I haven’t lost any. They’ve stayed. They give my days shape. Dinner. Light conversation. Massages. Sex. We pass the time enjoyably, I tell my sister. She doesn’t understand and calls me a whore. I tell her I don’t charge them. Some of them choose to put money in my account. Ramon sends his housekeeper to me twice a week to clean my apartment and stock my kitchen. Jorge pays the rent, brings me lingerie. Mercedes pays for the manicures and pedicures and my visits to her day spa. Jeremy always brings wine and flowers. Xian and Roel surprise me with unexpected gifts. They all know about each other. They all know to call before any surprise visits. Mostly, they all have their regular days, their regular nights. 

Another dream. A field of flowers, blooms of every shape and hue. Such vivid colors, I felt as if I could taste them on the tip of my tongue. Trees with more blossoms than leaves, vines that twisted in ecstasies of color, the green earth swathed with streaks of red and yellow and white. I dreamt the sun was shining warmly on my body, my body naked and feathered and afloat on the breeze. 

Sweetness. The perfume-drenched air made me dizzy. Morning glories. I couldn’t resist the morning glories tumbling across the white fence. Summer sky blue with butter yellow centers. So sweet. My tongue unfurled, and I sipped. It spilled into me, light refracting inside me, tumbling and tumbling. 

They won’t stop talking now. They talk late into the night, talking and talking unless their mouths are otherwise occupied. Ramon: Lorena was so beautiful. She loved to travel. We lost count of how many trips we made before she got sick. The last trip was to Paris. She wanted to visit all her favorite places again, but she grew too weak and we came back to the U.S. in a panic. Jorge: My mom keeps asking me if I’ve kissed her neighbor’s daughter yet. I keep telling her it’s none of her business. Yesterday, she bought a four foot teddy bear and told me that she and my dad will pitch in with the down payment for a house if I make them grandparents in the next two years. I told them making grandchildren was no problem—it was finding a wife that was going to take a little more work. Mercedes: These are my two babies at Little League. Here’s Brian 6th birthday party. Michael when he was born. These are from last summer when we went camping. Yes, that’s my husband. Yes, the boys look just like him. Xian: My parents won’t have anything to do with me since I came out to them. My brother’s trying to talk to them, but they’re not having it. The last time I saw my mother she was weeping and saying this never would have happened if we’d stayed in China. Roel: A veces temo que ella se va encontrar a otro. Hace dos años que no nos vemos. Muy peligroso regresar. Ojala y tendre lo suficiente pa’ traerla el siguiente año. Jeremy: I was eight years old the first time I kissed a girl. Her name was Melissa—all freckles and red hair. We were on the playground by the swings. She burst out crying and ran away right after.

They make me laugh, and they make me cry. I try to quiet them. But their words are always spilling out, even when they’re not there. The more I listen, the more a space inside me opens up. 

I woke tasting sweetness in my mouth, and Jorge was there, beside me. In sleep, he’d flung his leg over me. I wanted to reach for his arm and shake him awake. But I didn’t. 

They had been here. In this room. I’d heard them in my sleep. Heard them under the bed. I raised myself up on one elbow. In the night dark, I waited, perfectly still and perfectly silent. They would betray themselves. I strained for the sound of their humming wings. Nothing. Only my own breath, too loud in the ringing silence. And the sounds Jorge made. Not snoring, only a heavy inhale, exhale, inhale. I settled back into bed. He murmured my name and nuzzled my shoulder. Warm breath over my skin. I couldn’t help it, I turned towards him and wrapped my arm around him. He stirred awake. Through the long night, we moved together. I sipped at him, filling myself with his scent, the realness of him, his weight on me. The scent of him, sweet, not sweet, the scent stirred my memory, pink and purple blossoms. My lips sought out the center of him. 

The next night I lay in my bed alone, waiting for a knock at the door. Instead, I heard humming sounds that grew louder and louder, felt wings brush against my hair. I burrowed into my bed and covered my head with the blanket. I couldn’t breathe. All their tiny bodies with their wings beating against me. I dragged myself out of bed and ran to the living room. The swarm enfolded me. 

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. I felt their tongues unfurling. The sensation of tiny feathery knives against the underside of my skin, a sharpness so thin my flesh didn’t realize it should have begun to bleed. And I felt them drawing something from me, sweet and dark and swirling. 

Humming. Everywhere, humming. Tiny wings fluttering against my legs, my arms, my hair. Grooved tongues on my thighs, my back, my neck. Sipping at me. My body wasn’t mine anymore. It shuddered. It convulsed, their vibrations like an electric current. 

I felt them on my face. Heat spilled from my eyes. Deep crimson swelled along the line of my throat. A bright lime green spilled down my shoulders, silver arcs pooling in my palms. Glossy black in swaths over my breasts, my ribs, across my hips, brightening into sapphire and violet down my thighs and calves. Black feet. Black hands. Wings both delicate and merciless unmaking me. 

The light flooded in stronger and faster until all I could see was my luminescent flesh. Not fading. Not lost. Not dissolving. Tiny feathers like scales made of light burst from my skin. Spinning. Spinning. Liquid colors. Spinning. Spinning. Where is North? Is this what the god wants with me? He gave them direction. Told them to find the island in the middle of the lake. The island where they would see an eagle holding a snake, perched on a flowering nopal. Did we forget that he was also the god of direction? 

I breathed. Where is North? Breathed. The wings went silent. I listened to an eternity between a beat of my heart and the next. Breathed. This way. I felt North in my blood, in my marrow, in my flesh.

He needed new servants. Not warriors but compasses for the lost. And if I was a compass, I would never be alone in the dark. I would always have North. I would always have the hummingbirds. I would always have the lost. And the sweet.

Knocking at the door. Mercedes calling my name. I rose from the floor, fumbled at the locks, opened it. Fell into her arms. What’s wrong, she asked, are you okay, are you hurt? I couldn’t speak yet. She led me to the couch, wrapped her arms and legs around me. I rested. She held me, rocked me to sleep, singing a lilting melody, her lips against my neck. I slept deeply. Woke in the darkest part of the night. She was spooning me. I twisted out of her arms. Slipped my hands under her shoulders. Shook her just enough to wake her. Merced—I interrupted her, my lips hard against hers. I felt her heart pounding suddenly against me. She didn’t hesitate, letting me into her mouth, drawing her knees up around me. Red flowers, I saw red flowers in my mind when I kissed her, long and slender crimson petals. So much sweetness. Her hands in my hair, pulling it back when she moved her lips across my jaw, when she bit my earlobe. No words, only the sounds of mouths and flesh and grunting. We collapsed together, sweat-slick and gasping for air. Sleep. 

And then dawn. More light than I’d seen in five years. I could almost see her. I leaned in close, trying to see the curve of her cheek, the brightness of her eyes, the line of her brow. I didn’t want to blink, wanted to let all the light inside me. All the colors swirled into each other. No depth perception. I had to close my eyes to follow her into the shower, to get dressed, to sit at the table and have juice and toast with her, to walk her to the door and kiss her again and again. She didn’t want to leave. It’s all right, I told her, I will always be here. I had to close my eyes so I could breathe in the warm scent of her. Sunlight and wild grass. 

I climbed my furniture and lay my face against the paintings. The colors ran under and over each other. Red. Purple. Yellow. I opened the windows and leaned out. Blue sky. Leafy trees. Green. I ran to the bathroom, fumbled for the light switch. Leaned in close to the mirror. Olive skin. Dark shadows where my eyes should be. Darkness around my face. My hair. Black. 

I dove into my bed, almost dizzy. Stretched from the tips of my toes to the tips of my fingers, closed my eyes and watched colors move behind my eyelids. Dizzy and happy. I could feel North. I moved my arms and felt the humming around me respond. I wasn’t alone. When night came, I went to stand by the window and watch the stars go in and out of focus. The light advance and recede. 

I was at the window when I saw Ramon on the sidewalk, headed towards my door. It was Ramon, there was no mistaking his long limbs or the hunching of his narrow shoulders. He’d brought wine. We sipped it in front of the fire he built, stretched out on the carpet. I’d thought the flames would have kept my attention but I couldn’t keep my eyes from his face. Such deep grooves around his mouth. Lines on his forehead and arcing from his eyes. His hair was too long. He kept brushing it away from his forehead. I reached up to hold his hair back. I wanted to see the flames reflected in his eyes, but it was as if purple clouds were floating in mine. A glimpse of gold, a glimpse of darkness and then the purple would obscure my vision. I lifted my head to lay tiny kisses along his jawline. He flinched away from me. What are you doing? 

I had never done it before. Never held him with tenderness and softness. Never laid my hands against his face or smoothed his hair away. I’d never leaned in close towards him and laid tiny kisses along his jaw. He closed his eyes and stayed still, terribly still, against me. I unbuttoned his shirt, moved my hands gently across his chest, then my lips. It is all right, I whispered over his heart, it’s all right for us to be gentle with each other. It doesn’t change your love for her. His touch was like smoke. The scent of cenizo within his skin. The bloom and the leaves and even its scent after it’s dried. Smoke and sage in his mouth. And though he left before dawn, the night was soft and long. 

I kept waking up afterwards, feeling the softness unfurl inside me. 

Humming all around me. How different it sounded now. Soft, like water. I held out my arms and they looped and swirled around them. They followed me everywhere I went. I held up my black hands, my olive-skinned hands, where I could see them. The same and not. But I recognized them both. These doubled hands were the hands I’d used to make my lovers writhe. This doubled body the one I’d made into a shadow flitting above them, sipping at them, filling myself with their sweetness. Ramon. Mercedes. Jorge. I speak their names and they are sweet on the tongue. Xian. Jeremy. Roel. I don’t feel desperation for them anymore. When I move, I can’t feel shards of glass grinding against each other—only humming and the sounds flowers make when their blossoms open. 

The light comes and goes. The darkness comes and goes. When it is night and I am alone, I reach for no one. That is not what I am for. I am here until Jorge admits he has fallen in love with his mother’s neighbor’s daughter. Until Ramon lets himself love someone again. For as long as Mercedes needs me. Until Roel is reunited with his wife. Until Xian finds a love she can make a family with. For Jeremy for as long as he wants me. And there will be others whose scent will draw me. I am not refuge. I am not a crossroads. I am not North but I know where it lies. That is what I am for.  

Issue 53 • Spring 2026

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry