Violeta and El Silbón (Part Three)

By morning, the rumors had already begun.

No one said them directly to Violeta at first. Rumors rarely began as sentences. They began as eyes. As pauses. As women stopping their conversations when Violeta entered a room. As boys laughing too loudly when she passed. As mothers pulling daughters closer in the market.

Then the words came.

Fast girl.

Dirty girl.

Poor thing.

Slut.

The first time Violeta heard it, she did not understand.

She was eleven years old.

She had not kissed anyone. She had not held anyone’s hand except Xulma’s and her mother’s and, once, her father’s, when he was still alive and walking her across a flooded street.

But the word stuck to her anyway.

It found her in classrooms. It waited for her near the creek. It followed her home in the mouths of boys who suddenly wanted to stand too close, who suddenly thought her body was a door someone else had already opened.

Xulma was furious for her.

At least, that was how it looked.

She slapped one boy hard enough to split his lip. She screamed at another until he ran. She walked Violeta home and told her not to listen. She told everyone they were disgusting. She told Violeta she was beautiful and good and that people were cruel because they were bored.

Violeta clung to her.

What else was there to do?

Her father was dead. Her mother was a ghost who still cooked dinner. Her grandmother prayed in a language older than the church and looked at Violeta’s throat with a grief she never explained.

And Xulma was there.

Xulma talked for two people. Fought for two people. Laughed for two people. She stood between Violeta and the world so often that Violeta did not notice, not then, that Xulma was also standing between Violeta and the truth.

Years passed.

The girls grew older.

Their bodies changed, and the rumor changed with them. It learned new words. It crossed new rooms. It survived moves, schools, family arguments, and church gossip.

Then Xulma's family left Colombia.

Without her, Violeta found life more difficult. Suddenly, she had no friends, no voice beside her own, and nothing standing between her and those who sought to harm her.

Or so she believed.

The calls came from the States. Xulma's voice offered reprieve, affection, and an endless procession of I miss yous. Her mother made promises to Violeta's mother, too. One day, they would find a way to get them out of that town, away from the people who had been so cruel to their poor baby girl.

And with many prayers, candles to la Virgencita, and plegarias, their pleas were finally heard.

By the time Violeta's family left Colombia for Chicago, she believed distance might finally kill the rumors.

Distance killed nothing.

The rumors seemed to grow wings, learning which Avianca flight they had boarded, following her sweet light into that colder land with their many dark eyes.

In America, the rumor learned English.

It sounded different, but it had the same teeth.

Easy.

Crazy.

Damaged.

Dramatic.

Violeta, however, arrived differently prepared.

She learned to laugh before other people could. She learned to leave parties early. Her mystery made her interesting, intriguing even. She learned to watch men's hands. She learned that when someone called her intense, what they often meant was wounded in a way that made them uncomfortable.

Xulma stayed close.

But this time, Violeta stayed closer to herself.

Thank God for Xulma, people said.

Thank God Violeta has someone like her.

And Violeta believed that too.

That hadn't changed.

But she could tell Xulma was growing weary of being her savior.

Or at least, that was what Xulma wanted everyone to believe.

One afternoon, surrounded by their friends at the lunch table, Xulma made one of her little comments.

"I don't see why she can't just defend herself sometimes."

She spoke about Violeta as though Violeta weren't sitting right beside her.

"No one asked you to save me," Violeta said quietly, picking at her pudding.

Xulma turned her eyes toward Violeta.

Slowly.

Then the rest of her head followed.

The air around the table seemed to quiet, despite the noise of the cafeteria.

"What did you—"

"Yeah. I don't ask you to defend me," Violeta continued. "I love you, but it's not something I ask of you. You do it, and I'm grateful. I don't know what you're expecting from me. And, by the way, I do defend myself."

She smiled gently at her friend.

"You just talk more than me."

Xulma's eyes grew wild.

Dark.

For a moment, Violeta saw something in her she had never noticed before.

An emptiness.

Something that could swallow a person whole, and yet seemed filled with something else entirely.

Then Xulma smiled.

She hugged Violeta and laughed.

"Me prometiste," she whispered.

Violeta went still.

After school, Violeta reached for Xulma's hand.

Xulma immediately pulled away.

"I'm not into that ga—"

"No hagas el ridículo, Xulma. You know damn well what I was talking about. You defending me. I never ask you to, but you do, and I'm always grateful. I love you. You're my sist—"

"You said saved, marica!"

Xulma stopped walking.

"You know what that means! You did not ask then? Are you not grateful, Violeta?"

Violeta stared at her.

There it was again.

That spite.

That peculiar darkness in Xulma's eyes, as if Violeta had committed some terrible offense simply by existing outside the place Xulma had made for her.

"No, Xulma. Why would you say something like that? I'm grateful for you. For what you did. For everything you do, every day."

"Well, then."

Xulma wiped her face.

Her expression changed so quickly it startled Violeta.

"Todo bien. Forgiven."

She smiled and took Violeta's hand.

Held it for a moment.

Then let go.

They continued walking as if nothing had happened.

At least, Xulma did.

Violeta felt something had changed between them.

She had never asked to be forgiven.

Without Xulma, though, high school would have been abysmal. Violeta knew it. Without her hermana del alma, she would have struggled to make friends, fought through more than she could manage with her wit alone, and walked home through streets that felt too wide, too loud, too full of strangers.

Xulma found her friends.

Xulma found her parties.

Xulma found her clothes that made her look less sad, less foreign, less like a girl waiting for a sound in the trees.

Later, as they grew older, they attended colleges not too far from one another.

Eventually, Xulma helped Violeta find an apartment.

"It's perfect," she said. "Ingrid is a little avoidant, but funny. Lina is sweet. You'll like them."

"I don't know," Violeta said.

"You need to live with people who aren't our moms."

"I live with people."

"You hide near people. That's not the same."

Xulma was good at saying things that sounded true enough to obey.

So Violeta moved in.

The apartment was on the second floor of an old house with thin walls, a narrow kitchen, and radiators that screamed at night like something trapped inside them.

Ingrid lived in the room closest to the stairs and treated affection like an allergy.

Lina kept plants in every window and apologized to furniture when she bumped into it.

Violeta took the smallest room because it had a fire escape and a view of the street.

For a while, it worked.

They paid rent. They bought groceries. They learned each other's bad habits.

Ingrid left mugs everywhere.

Lina cried during commercials.

Violeta forgot the laundry in the washer.

Xulma eventually moved out with her longtime boyfriend, a man she had met during college who, apparently, came from a region near where they had grown up in Colombia.

It struck Violeta as strange, somehow.

But Xulma only smiled.

"When the heart knows, it just knows."

She still came over almost every day, bringing wine, gossip, makeup, opinions about partners who never lasted long, and stories that made everyone laugh until they forgave her for taking up too much room.

Every year, they went camping.

It had started as Xulma's idea, of course.

"Women in nature," she said the first time, lifting a plastic cup of boxed wine like a toast. "Healing. Trees. No men. Maybe mushrooms if Ingrid stops being a cop."

"I'm not a cop," Ingrid said. "I just don't want to die in the woods because you saw a TikTok."

"Coward."

"Correct."

They went anyway.

Then they went again.

After a while, the trip became ritual.

Every year, the same mountains. The same rented cabin near the same trail. The same bad jokes, cheap food, too many blankets, too much wine, someone always forgetting a flashlight, someone always pretending not to be afraid of the dark.

Violeta never loved the woods.

Not really.

But she loved Lina's morning coffee.

She loved Ingrid complaining while secretly enjoying herself.

She loved the way Xulma became bright by firelight, all gold skin and dark hair and stories pouring from her mouth like she had swallowed the sun.

Then, one year, Xulma brought Berto.

The girls already knew him well. He had been Xulma's boyfriend for years, after all.

Everyone except Violeta, that is.

Which was strange, considering Violeta was supposedly Xulma's closest friend.

She knew Berto only in passing. A quick hello. A short conversation. Occasionally seeing him walk through the apartment.

The other girls had spent time with him.

Violeta never had.

Xulma had introduced him to everyone at a birthday dinner in Queens, sweetly announcing that he was from los Llanos.

Everyone had oohed and aahed.

But it was on that camping trip that Berto finally approached Violeta for a proper introduction.

He smiled.

"¿Qué hubo? Tú debes ser la hermanita, ¿no?"

He was handsome in a warm, easy way.

The kind of handsome that made people trust themselves around him.

He had a steady voice, good manners, and the careful confidence of a man who had learned exactly how long to hold eye contact before it became a threat.

Everyone liked him.

Lina liked him immediately.

Ingrid said, "He seems normal," which from Ingrid was basically a blessing.

Even Violeta wanted to like him.

He brought flowers. He remembered people's allergies. He helped carry groceries without making a show of it. He called Xulma reina in a way that made her roll her eyes and smile at the same time.

He asked Violeta questions about Colombia, but never too many.

He knew how to be gentle with a room.

Still, the first time he touched Violeta's shoulder while moving past her in the kitchen, her whole body went cold.

"Sorry," he said.

"It's fine."

It was not fine.

She could not explain it.

He had done nothing wrong.

Nothing she could name.

Nothing she could take to Xulma without sounding exactly like the kind of woman Xulma had spent years teaching her not to be.

Too sensitive.

Too intense.

Too haunted.

So Violeta gave him a chance.

Then another.

Then another.

She watched him love Xulma beautifully.

Or what looked like beautifully.

He listened when she spoke. He brought her coffee the way she liked it. He held her hand in public. He made plans.

He stayed.

Xulma changed with him.

She softened.

Or performed softness so well that no one could tell the difference.

When she announced the engagement, she did it in the apartment kitchen with champagne no one had asked for and a grin she could not contain.

"I'm getting married," she said.

Lina screamed first.

Ingrid said, "Absolutely not," then hugged her so tightly Xulma laughed into her shoulder.

Violeta stood frozen for half a second too long before joy remembered what shape to make of her face.

Then she hugged Xulma.

Hard.

"I'm happy for you," Violeta said.

And she meant it.

That was the worst part.

She meant it with her whole tired heart. Whatever else had lived between them, whatever old roots wrapped around their friendship, Violeta wanted Xulma loved.

Properly.

Safely.

Without a man making a meal out of her shine.

"Careful," Xulma said, laughing. "You'll break me before the wedding."

"Let me see it," Ingrid said.

Xulma blinked.

"See what?"

"The ring, dumbass."

"Oh." Xulma smiled. "You're going to fucking love it."

Lina lowered her glass.

"Oh?"

"There was something I always thought was so beautiful," Xulma said. "Something I wanted for so long but could never have. One of a kind."

She turned toward Berto, her expression melting into something almost tender.

"And Berto told me he'd move mountains to reach the sky if that's what it took to get it for me."

"That sounds like Berto," Lina said.

"It does, doesn't it?" Xulma replied, pleased despite herself. "He wanted to give me something meaningful."

Violeta felt the first turn of sickness low in her stomach.

Xulma extended her left hand.

Then, with an almost theatrical delicacy, she raised it and stretched out her ring finger.

White gold.

Delicate.

Almost too fine to see.

And there it was.

A pearl moon.

Small and curved, with craters worked naturally into its surface, iridescent when the kitchen light touched it right.

For a moment, Violeta forgot how to breathe.

The room continued around her.

Ingrid said something sharp and affectionate.

Lina leaned closer.

Someone touched Xulma's shoulder.

Berto stood near the kitchen island, smiling with his hands in his pockets.

But Violeta was no longer in the apartment.

She was in the dirt.

Leaves stuck to her cheek.

A hand over her mouth.

A chain breaking at her throat.

"Vi?"

Xulma was looking at her.

Everyone was.

"You okay?" Ingrid asked.

Violeta blinked.

The pearl sat perfectly in its setting.

It couldn't have been—

"It looks familiar," Violeta said.

Xulma's smile changed.

Not enough for anyone else to see.

But Violeta saw it.

"Does it?" Xulma asked.

"Can I?"

Violeta held out her hand.

For a second, Xulma did not move.

Then she leaned forward.

"Why, of course."

She placed her hand gently into Violeta's, sliding her fingers across Violeta's palm, one by one, until the ring rested there between them.

She held her hand rigidly, like a mannequin displaying something precious. Her chin lifted slightly, her wrist turned just enough to catch the light.

Displayed.

Protected.

Possessed.

Only then did she let the full weight of her hand rest against Violeta's warm palm.

Xulma's skin was clammy.

Violeta's fingers began to shake.

Up close, the pearl was not as perfect as she remembered. There was a small chip along the lower curve, almost hidden by the silvery-gold setting.

Violeta gently turned Xulma's hand.

Then suddenly released it.

"Vio—"

"Shhhto," Violeta said involuntarily.

There, inside one of the tiny hollows of the moon, was a pink dot no larger than the head of a pin.

Nail polish.

Violeta and El Silbón (Part Two)

TW: acts of physical and SV are insinuated.

She only knew that after that night, Xulma did not tease her about El Silbón anymore. Not for a while. She did not call her Chía either. She returned to being bright, talkative Xulma, the girl who could make adults forgive anything and make Violeta laugh even when she did not want to.

They became inseparable.

People said it with affection at first.

There goes Xulma, and there goes her shadow.

Violeta did not mind.

After her father died, being someone’s shadow felt better than being no one’s anything.

Xulma spoke for her when teachers asked too many questions. Xulma pulled her into games. Xulma shared food from her house and secrets from other girls and stories she swore were true even when they changed a little each time she told them.

Violeta gave her loyalty in return.

The kind children give before they understand loyalty can be harvested.

Years passed that way.

The pearl stayed at Violeta’s throat.

El Silbón stayed in the trees and in the far nooks of memories.

And Xulma stayed close enough to learn every quiet thing about her.

By the time they were eleven,  and fourteen, Violeta trusted Xulma with her silences.

That was the mistake.

The day everything happened, the sky was white with heat.

The girls had been sent to buy plantains and soap from a woman two roads over. Xulma had complained the whole way there and charmed two pieces of candy from the woman’s oldest son on the way back.

“You see?” Xulma said, unwrapping one with her teeth. “This is why you need me.”

“For candy?”

“For survival.”

Violeta laughed.

Xulma handed her the second piece.

The road home ran beside a stretch of trees where the shade looked almost blue. Beyond it, the land dipped toward a creek. Violeta liked that part of the walk. It smelled of wet leaves and mud, and for a few minutes the heat loosened its grip.

Then Xulma stopped.

Ahead of them, near the bend in the road, men stood by a truck.

Four of them.

Maybe five.

They wore green and brown, their rifles hanging from their shoulders like extra limbs. One of them was young. Too young, Violeta thought, to have such dead eyes.

Xulma’s candy wrapper crackled in her fist.

“Don’t look at them,” she whispered.

Violeta looked anyway.

The young one looked back.

Recognition moved across Xulma’s face so quickly Violeta almost missed it.

Almost.

“Do you know him?” Violeta asked.

Xulma did not answer.

The young man smiled.

It was not a good smile.

“Run,” Xulma said.

So they ran.

They ran through the brush, past the thin fence behind Doña Mercedes’s house, past the creek where the stones turned slick and black under moss. Branches slapped their arms. Thorns caught their skirts. Behind them, men shouted.

At first, Violeta thought it was a game her body had misunderstood. Some terrible kind of chase where if they were fast enough, clever enough, small enough, they would win.

Then a hand closed around her hair.

She hit the ground hard enough to lose the sky.

Xulma disappeared into the green.

For one bright, stupid second, Violeta hated her for it.

Then she saw Xulma crouched behind the roots of a fallen tree, both hands clamped over her mouth, eyes huge and wet and fixed on Violeta.

Do not move, Violeta wanted to tell her.

Do not come out.

One of the men held Violeta down. His hand covered her mouth. His fingers smelled like sweat and metal. She could not breathe right. She could not scream right. The world became pieces: leaves above her, dirt under her nails, a boot near her cheek, the young man standing apart from the others with his rifle held too tightly.

Someone laughed.

Someone told her to be quiet.

Then the world went away from her.

When it came back, the young man was kneeling beside her.

Not to help.

He reached for the necklace at her throat.

Violeta tried to pull away, but her body felt far from her. Like something she had left behind and might never return to.

The young man touched the pearl moon.

For a moment, his face changed.

Not kindness.

Recognition.

As if he knew exactly what he was taking.

He broke the chain with one quick pull.

Violeta made a sound then. Not a scream. Something smaller. Something worse.

The pearl moon disappeared into his fist.

Then came the whistle.

Three notes.

Falling.

Every man in the forest froze.

The one holding Violeta clamped his hand over her mouth again, harder this time.

“Shh,” he breathed.

It was the first time Violeta heard fear in a man’s voice.

The whistle came again.

Far away.

No.

Close.

No.

Both.

It moved through the trees as if the forest itself had learned to call children by name.

The man above her began to pray.

Xulma screamed.

It was not a long scream. It was not brave in the way stories make girls brave. It was wild and broken and ripped out of her before she could stop it.

The man holding Violeta turned his head.

That was all El Silbón needed.

Something long and pale unfolded from between the trees.

Violeta saw a hand first. Wet fingers curling around the trunk of a ceiba. Then an arm. Then a body too tall to belong to any living thing. El Silbon bent toward the man who had covered her mouth.

The forest went silent.

The man tried to raise his rifle.

El Silbón took him apart before he could fire.

Violeta did not understand what she was seeing. She only understood that the hand was gone from her mouth.

Air rushed into her.

Xulma burst from the roots and grabbed her.

“Get up,” she sobbed. “Violeta, get up.”

Violeta could not feel her legs.

“Get up!”

The young man with the moon necklace ran too.

For a moment, all three of them ran together: Xulma dragging Violeta by the hand, Violeta stumbling through the brush, the young man crashing beside them with terror bright on his face.

Behind them, El Silbón whistled once.

The young man looked back.

Xulma did not.

At the creek, the young man went left.

The girls went right.

They never saw him again.

They did not stop running until the trees thinned and the first houses appeared through the rain.

By then, Violeta’s throat was raw from trying not to cry.

By then, Xulma’s hands were covered in dirt and blood.

By then, the moon necklace was gone.

And somewhere behind them, deep in the forest, the Whistler carried a new sound in his sack of bones.

After the forest, Xulma made Violeta swear.

They were sitting behind Xulma’s aunt’s house, knees pressed to their chests, mud dried along their calves. Someone had wrapped Violeta in a blanket even though the heat had not broken. Someone else had given Xulma sugar water. Adults moved in and out of the house, speaking in voices too low for children and too frightened for comfort.

Violeta’s throat hurt.

Every time she swallowed, she felt the place where the chain had snapped.

Xulma sat beside her, shaking so hard the cup in her hand clicked against her teeth.

“You can’t tell,” Xulma whispered.

Violeta looked at her.

“What?”

“You can’t tell anyone what happened.”

Violeta touched her neck.

The pearl was gone.

“My necklace,” she said.

Xulma’s face twisted.

“I know.”

“He took it.”

“I know.”

“He took it from me.”

“Stop saying that.”

Violeta stared.

Xulma looked toward the house, toward the adults, toward the road beyond the yard where night had begun to gather itself.

“If you tell them, they’ll ask why we were there,” Xulma said.

“We were walking home.”

“They won’t care.”

“But—”

“They’ll ask why they touched you. They’ll ask what you did. They’ll ask why you didn’t run faster. They’ll ask why I hid. They’ll ask why you came back without your necklace.”

Violeta’s mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Xulma took her hand then. Her fingers were damp and cold.

“They’ll make it worse,” she said. “I’m trying to protect you.”

Violeta wanted to believe her.

That was the cruelest part of any lie. It did not need to be beautiful. It only needed to arrive when the truth was too unbearable to hold alone.

So Violeta nodded.

Xulma squeezed her hand.

“Swear.”

“Xulma—”

“Swear.”

Violeta looked down at their hands. Dirt beneath their fingernails. Blood dried at the edge of Xulma’s sleeve. A small crescent-shaped cut across Violeta’s palm where a thorn had caught her while they ran.

“I swear,” Violeta said.

Xulma exhaled like she had been forgiven.

Poco A Poco

Es algo que dice mi prima.

Los daños hacen que uno
pierda pasos,
se descuadre
y se doble
sin saber dónde
poner sus temores
y su dolor:

si en la luz o en la oscuridad.

Tengo luz y oscuridad
y, aunque temía,
ya no le temo tanto a ninguna,
ni a las de otros,
si no temen mostrármelas a mí.

Si hay algo que temer,
pues hay miedo allí.
Pero con claridad
todo se ve,
y eso es algo que estoy viendo.

He perdido
muchas oportunidades
de ver la profundidad
de las personas,
de las cosas,
por no querer mirar
más al fondo:
por el miedo,
por el dolor,
por lo tenebroso
de lo más oscuro.

O por que me temen a mi.

Pero poco a poco,
conociéndome,
siendo claro
conmigo mismo,
veo
con claridad
lo más profundo:
lo de mí.

Creo que así es
ver con claridad
a los demás.

Es como ver
las nebulosas
y los océanos
por dentro.

Bellezas que a veces
no comprendemos.

Pero con el tiempo
y la paciencia,
se nos da
el don
de conocerlas.

English:

It is something my cousin says.

Hurt makes one

lose one's footing,

lose one's balance,

and buckle,

unsure of where

to place one's fears

and one's pain:

in the light or in the darkness.

I hold both light and darkness,

and though I was afraid,

I no longer fear either so much—

nor the darkness of others,

provided they do not fear

revealing it to me.

If there is something to fear,

then fear is present there.

But with clarity,

everything comes into view,

and that is something I am seeing.

I have missed

many opportunities

to see the depths

of people,

of things,

because I did not want to look

any deeper:

held back by fear,

by pain,

by the terrifying nature

of the deepest darkness.

Or because they fear me.

But little by little,

as I come to know myself

and am honest

with myself,

I see

with clarity

the deepest parts:

the depths within me.

I believe that is how

one sees others

clearly.

It is like seeing

nebulae

and oceans

from the inside.

Beauties that, at times,

we do not comprehend.

But with time

and patience,

we are granted

the gift

of knowing them.

The Snag

There are things I keep doing
because I think they are right,
even when they are not
right for me.

I intend for a clean love
but within, keep returning
to the same loop:

I sew my open wound,
and somewhere in my garden
a snag catches the thread
and pulls it loose.

My mind gets caught there,
wanting to make room
for the unacceptable
by understanding it.

You can understand,
I tell myself.
I’ve said it before:
you can understand
how these acts come
from what was handed to someone
without their asking,
from what was handed down
to the ones before them.

But you don’t have to accept it.
You don’t have to give it your time.
You know what it costs
to lose yourself there again.

So I sew the wound,
minding this time
what matters most:

Ze.
Myself.
The ones I love
who meet me with reciprocity,
authentically,
with love
and without harm.

I carry them
in my heart.

I give myself grace.
I meet myself with patience,
knowing this may be
the hardest thing
I have ever had to learn—
actually no
To unlearn
that which was
given to me.
To openly accept such things…

That will be the hardest.

Harder than having to learn
any class of numbers
taught by a teacher
who had lost their love
for teaching.

I am grateful
I’ve been given the chance
to love me still.
To love this life still.
So that I may have the love
of learning this.

Nolan Xavier Wells

As if he was nothing,

you discarded him,

wanted to cover up—

what?

Did you think

you could hide

ugly,

alabaster

lies forever?

Is that how

the old saying goes?

Was one of you kiddos

thinking,

or praying,

that some good Christian,

blue-eyed Jesus

somehow exists—

that he could make it

so the voices

would get so garbled

you could no longer hear

yourselves say:

you killed him.

That poor boy

had parents

to go home to.

Wait—

didn’t you

have parents

to go home to?

And those parents,

they will argue

your bright futures,

fight to make sure

you still get

to see them through.

You killed him.

And not one of you

felt a thing.

You can say

you felt

the slightest mess,

the slightest sickness

in your stomach—

but did you speak it?

Did you say

what you did?

Did you call it

a mistake?

Did you say

what happened?

Did you tell

his parents,

his grieving mother,

where he was?

You feigned care.

You feigned concern.

You will always feign—

with a hand

pressed to your chest.

You,

who come in

with the charge.

This is your lineage.

Your privilege.

This is how

you raised

your children

to be,

because

this

is who

you are—

while they suffer.

Their children.

E.E. Cummings

(Here is the secret that no one knows:
the root of the root,
the bud of the bud,
and the sky of the sky
of a tree called life,
which grows higher
than a soul can hope
or a mind can hide—

and this is the wonder
that keeps the stars apart.)

There are things
we need not carry anymore.

They were never ours
to begin with,
nor ours to end.

But there is one thing
I carry:

your heart.

I carry it
in my heart.

Siachoque

Trickles of sie
fall onto my head
and body,
the small, little
crackling, tapping
sounds striking
every single part
of me,
reminding me
that I am
still here.

I look up,
eyes closed,
at Guatguyca,
thanking them
for their blessing,
yet I feel as though
something has been
hollowed within
me.

Sie continues
to tap at every
bit of me
until my ze
is fully at attention.

Ze responds:

No estás rota,
bebé.
Solo cansada.

You will learn
to chibysuca
again.

It all depends
on the fihizca.
The pquyquy
will guide you.

I press my hands
against it.

No estoy rota.

No…
no lo estás.

Sie washes
away everything
that felt gone.

I realize
how many times
I’ve stepped
into different
versions of
myself
and watched
the Siachoque
gently take
them away—

with joy,
with grief,
with pain,
with love,

but never
with any intent
to harm.

Only to carry away
that which
no longer belongs,

and leave me
with what always stays:

ze

Violeta and El Silbón (Part One)

Violeta was not supposed to be Violeta.

Her mother wanted to name her Chía, after the moon. Her father said no. He said the name was too old, too heavy, too much like calling something down from the sky and asking it to stay.

So they named her after the violet instead.

A softer thing, her father thought. A flower. Something small enough to hold in the mouth without consequence.

But violets grew in the land of the moon.

That was the part no one said aloud.

For the first seven years of her life, Violeta belonged to the highlands. To cold mornings, pale fog, and mountains that held the sky close enough to touch. Her mother said the moon watched over girls born near Chía. Her father said the moon watched everything and that was no reason to invite it into the house.

Her grandmother said nothing.

Her grandmother only touched the necklace at Violeta’s throat and smiled the way old women smiled when they knew more than they meant to say.

The pearl had not been bought.

It had not been found in a glass case or lifted from a velvet tray. No jeweler had shaped it. No man had chosen it. No one had polished it into meaning after the fact.

It had come from the shell that way.

A moon.

Small and curved, with craters worked naturally into its surface, iridescent when the light touched it right. White at first glance, then blue, then violet, then silver, as if it could not decide which part of the sky had made it.

It was found on the day Violeta was born.

Her grandmother had called it Chía’s Chía.

The moon’s moon.

Violeta’s almost-name made visible.

Her mother had placed it on a thin silver chain and fastened it around her neck so she would never forget where she came from. Not the country. Not the town. Something older than that. The highland fog. The cold mornings. The land where the moon had a temple and girls were named carefully because names were doors.

The tiny pink dot came later.

Violeta put it there herself when she was ten years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a bottle of nail polish stolen from her mother’s dresser. She dipped the head of a pin into the polish and pressed one careful dot inside the smallest hollow of the pearl.

A secret heart, she told herself.

So small no one would see it unless they bothered to look.

Before that, though, before the pink dot, before Meta, before Xulma, before the forest taught Violeta what men could become when no one was watching, her father died.

No one told her the whole story.

Adults rarely did.

They gave children pieces and expected them to swallow the spaces in between.

A bad road.

A late night.

A body brought home before sunrise.

Her mother made a sound Violeta had never heard before and never wanted to hear again. It came from somewhere beneath language. Somewhere older than grief. Her grandmother covered Violeta’s ears, but sound entered the body in other ways. Through the floor. Through the walls. Through the hands of relatives who touched her head and said, Pobrecita, as if pity were a blessing.

After that, her mother stopped sleeping.

Her grandmother stopped singing.

The house filled with low voices and closed doors. Men came and went. Women cried in kitchens. Someone burned coffee. Someone prayed. Someone said it was better to leave before the land swallowed what was left of them.

Within a month, they were gone.

Her mother packed their clothes, her father’s photographs, the good plates wrapped in newspaper, and the small wooden box where she kept his wedding ring. Violeta was allowed one bag and the necklace around her throat.

They moved east, away from the cold moon-land, down toward Meta, where the heat sat heavy on the skin and the plains opened wide enough to make a person feel watched from every direction.

There, the nights were different.

In the highlands, darkness came down gently. It filled the valleys, softened the mountains, pressed its cool hands against the windows.

In Meta, darkness stood up.

It came out of the trees. It rose from the grass. It waited at the edge of the road with its mouth closed.

That was where Violeta first heard about  El Silbón.

And that was where she met Xulma.

Xulma was the first girl in Meta who spoke to her like Violeta had not arrived carrying a death.

She was beautiful in the careless way some children are beautiful before they learn beauty can become a weapon. Her hair fell down her back in a black rope. Her smile came quickly. Her hands were always moving when she talked, shaping every story in the air before it reached her mouth.

And Xulma could talk.

She could talk herself out of chores, into kitchens, through locked gates, and back into the good graces of adults who had sworn they were finished with her. She knew which tía kept dulces in her apron pocket, which neighbor’s dog only pretended to bite, which boys would carry water if she smiled at them first.

To Violeta, who had spent the months after her father’s death speaking only when spoken to, Xulma seemed miraculous.

“You’re too quiet,” Xulma told her on their third day of knowing each other.

Violeta shrugged.

“That’s fine,” Xulma said. “I talk enough for two people.”

And she did.

For a while, Violeta loved her for it.

Xulma told her where to buy the best mango biche. Xulma showed her which roads flooded first when the rains came. Xulma taught her which boys were stupid, which girls were cruel, which adults could be trusted with small truths and which ones could not be trusted with anything.

She also taught her the rules of El V.

Not at first.

At first, Xulma only teased.

“You really don’t know?” she asked one evening while they sat on the low wall outside Xulma’s aunt’s house, their knees dusty, their palms sticky from fruit.

“Know what?”

Xulma’s eyes widened with pleasure. She loved knowing something before someone else did.

“El que silba.”

Violeta looked toward the road.

The sun had almost disappeared. The sky had gone orange, then purple, then bruised. In the distance, cattle moved like shadows behind a fence.

“The one who whistles,” Xulma said.

Violeta touched the pearl at her throat.

Xulma noticed. Xulma noticed everything.

“What does he do?”

Xulma leaned closer.

“They say he walks at night with a sack of bones over his shoulder.”

Violeta made a face. “Whose bones?”

“Depends who’s telling it.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is here.”

Xulma smiled, but there was something serious beneath it. Something that made Violeta sit still.

“They say if you hear him whistle far away, he’s close. If you hear him close, he’s far. So you have to listen right. You have to know how distance lies.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Most true things don’t.”

Violeta looked down at her shoes.

“What happens if he catches you?”

Xulma shrugged.

“He takes what he’s owed.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Bones, usually.”

“Usually?”

Xulma laughed then, bright and easy, and jumped off the wall.

“Don’t look so scared, Chía.”

Violeta went cold.

No one called her that.

No one had ever called her that.

Xulma noticed that too.

“What?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why?”

“That’s not my name.”

“But it almost was, right?”

Violeta stared at her.

Xulma grinned.

“My aunt heard your mother say it. Chía. Like the moon.”

Violeta’s hand tightened around the pearl.

Xulma stepped closer, her expression softening into something like apology, or something pretending to be apology.

“I like it,” she said. “It suits you.”

Violeta did not answer.

From somewhere beyond the fields, a whistle rose into the evening.

Three notes.

Falling.

Both girls went still.

It was low at first. Almost pretty. The kind of sound a person might make without thinking, calling a dog, calling a friend, calling a child home.

Then it came again.

Bent in the middle.

Wrong somehow.

Xulma’s face changed.

“What?” Violeta whispered.

Xulma grabbed her wrist.

“Don’t answer.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Don’t move.”

The whistle came again.

Far away.

No.

Close.

No.

Both.

It moved through the road, through the fence, through the orange trees behind Xulma’s aunt’s house. It seemed to come from every direction at once, thin and clean, threading itself through the spaces between Violeta’s ribs.

Inside the house, someone dropped a plate.

A woman’s voice snapped, “Niñas. Adentro. Now.”

Xulma pulled Violeta so hard she almost tripped.

They ran into the house, past the kitchen, past the table where Xulma’s aunt stood with one hand pressed to her mouth. Someone shut the door. Someone else shut the windows. The room filled with the smell of hot oil, soap, and fear.

No one spoke until the whistle faded.

Only then did Xulma’s aunt look at them.

“Who whistled?”

“No one,” Xulma said quickly.

Her aunt’s eyes moved to Violeta.

Violeta shook her head.

The woman crossed herself.

Then she touched the doorframe with two fingers and murmured something Violeta did not understand.

That night, when Violeta told her mother, her mother slapped her once across the mouth.

Not hard enough to bruise.

Hard enough to remember.

“Do not talk about that thing,” her mother said.

Violeta stood in the kitchen, one hand on her cheek.

Her grandmother turned from the sink.

“Enough,” she said.

Her mother began to cry.

That frightened Violeta more than the slap.

Her grandmother came to her after everyone else had gone quiet. She sat on the edge of Violeta’s bed and touched the pearl moon at her throat.

“You heard him?”

Violeta nodded.

“Did you answer?”

“No.”

“Did you look?”

“No.”

Her grandmother closed her eyes.

“Good.”

“What does he want?”

Her grandmother did not answer right away.

Outside, insects screamed in the dark. A dog barked twice and then stopped all at once.

“He wants what people promise him,” her grandmother said finally.

“I didn’t promise him anything.”

“No,” her grandmother said.

Her fingers tightened around the pearl.

“But others might.”

Violeta did not understand.

Not then.

El Silbon si lo hubiese dibujado un nene- Evy Gonzalez Ronceria 2026

Waltz

The planets
dance amongst
one another

and humanity
runs in calamity.

Oh, celestial waltz
brings upon
a devastating

Silence.

Where everything
gets to begin
Again.

Were we triumphant
As a species?

Or was it ego

Eating away
At our beings?

Again.

Wake  up little things
before 

Something
cataclysmic
happens
for

You.

Performing Strength

“Performing strength,”
is what the elder called it.

And I thought:

Is that why my mom
is so tired now?

Is that what is happening
to my friends?

To me?

Because for years,
I performed
the act of normal.

Performance
was all I knew.

Performing stable.
Performing okay.
Performing getting better.

The only thing
that never seemed
performative
was love.

I gave it
like I breathed,

because it was gifted—

by Bachué,
by Chía,
by Creator.

But you cannot
give love
to everyone.

And you cannot
receive everything
just because
it is offered.

Performing strength
does not mean
you are strong.

Giving love
does not mean
everyone deserves it,

or that anyone
has the right
to take it.

Everything became twisted.

Even the times
love was reciprocated
became deformed.

The masks.
The costumes.

Eventually,
I could no longer
perform the acts.

And without them,

I could finally see

how much strength
I had spent,

how much love
I had poured out,

how much of myself
I had mistaken
for something endless.

I had been used.

I had been used up.

Figure Eights

Sooner or later,
we will make figure eights
over all the damage
they wrought
upon us,

and it will look
like all the times
we practiced
pretty cursive
in our notebooks

as children—

our government names
over and over,
perfecting our handwriting,

knowing we would
never reach the pinnacle,

but hoping,
through impression,
we could reach
perfection

for them.

Something they, too,
had wished for

as they signed
their names—

a wish,
a wish,
a wish

forced upon them
when their names were taken,

a new name
assigned.

Dream Walk

I walk in their feet
through the darkness.

I can see his
stoic face, gently
touched
by little rays of sunlight.

Aware of all things.

Alone.

Unaware, maybe,
that soon
Mother will hold him,
comfort him.

A betrayal.

I never get to that part—

something I know
but always miss.

Ever Fickle and Changeable Thing

Is that so?

Do you think that talking
in my sleep helps guide me,
gently,
as I walk through broken plates
left by all our generations?

I am bloodied,
and when I wake,
you act as though
nothing happened.

You leave me
to walk alone through this,
wondering how I got here,
trying to understand
the motions,
the feelings—

reaching for walls,
ruminating,
internalizing—

while from your watchtower
you can see it all.

You can see through it,
and I cannot
see you.

You reach out
and rearrange
the pain,
the fear,
the confusion,

when all I ever wanted
was to keep you safe.

That is all
I ever wanted
for anyone in my life.

I spoke it
into a love
that made no sense.

Why do that
to someone?

Why did I do that
to myself—

skew everything
until it made me
so small?

A look.
A word.
A face.

And then led
to a wolf’s
lies,
lies,
lies,

until they all
became true.

Was it enjoyable
to watch me crumble?

The harm I have done...

Tell me:

Was it worth the cost?

Did I pay enough
for you?

Or not enough—
for loving you
genuinely?

Tell me.

Did you see
the extent
of what you did?

How I hurt others
through the harm
you caused?

It was like poison.

How far can you see
from your watchtower?

Did you see
the messes I made?

The friends I lost?

The friendships
I nearly destroyed?

How my mind collapsed?

How I was losing
my ability to speak?

To write?

What did you think
of your magnum opus?

The scars
on my legs
and arms.

Did I bleed enough
for you?

Fickle thing.

You do not know me.
You do not own me.
You do not keep me.

I certainly
do not own you.

I never wanted
to own you.

Only to love you.

And if you were okay,
then I was too.

My wounds are healing.

And they ache.

I must repair
the broken pieces
of all these plates—

at least
what I can.

What I cannot,
I will leave.

Kintsugi,
they call it.

We know how
to work with gold.

I’ll shape these pieces
in such a way
that only those
who know how to handle them
will know
how to hold them.

And those who cannot
will cut their hands
against the edges.

Carelessness
will do that.

Maybe the next time,
if you so choose,
you will partake
in learning how
to handle something

instead of
only spectating.

love
is not pervasive.

Learn of life
and of the wounds
that make it—

not how
to make the wounds.

You are not
the only one
who has known pain.

I lost myself
in the wilderness.

Oh, but now—

now I know why,
Aeneas.

Your tongue
gives you a way.

I may have been mad,
but language is my gift,

and the moon
gives me sight.

I will never be
your Dido.

Enough
of this madness.

Projection(Gabo)

Not everything is sexual.

Not everything
is someone
trying to hurt you.

Not everything
is someone
trying to use you,

abuse you,
harm you.

Sometimes,
the people around you
want to love you.

Care for you.
Listen to you.
Know you.
Be there for you.

But when you have lived
through so much pain,

every shadow
starts to look like someone
waiting behind a tree.

Every hand
reaching toward you
looks like another hand
coming to take.

And maybe
it becomes easier

to pass the pain
to someone else,

not realizing

that it was not
their pain to bear,

just as it was
never yours.

So it travels.

From body
to body.

House
to house.

Generation
to generation.

Until suffering becomes
something inherited.

Something so familiar
you mistake it
for love.

And all it does
is make everyone sick.

You give them
the disease
someone gave you.

You lead them deeper
into the forest

and call it protection.

You make them afraid

and call it care.

When all they ever wanted
was for you
to be safe.

When all they ever wanted
was to feel safe.

To know you.

To love you.

The rest
I never asked for.

But I came back for it.

Again.

Because you all ached,

and all I ever wanted
was to understand.

So I followed
every sound.

Every shadow.

Every disappearing figure
between the trees,

believing that
if I went far enough,

I would finally find
the thing

that made all of this
make sense.

But there is no end
to a forest
you keep choosing
to enter.

There is no understanding
that can make cruelty
become love.

There are wounds
I cannot heal
by climbing inside them.

There are histories
I cannot rewrite.

There are a hundred years
of hurt

that do not belong
inside my body.

That was never
what any of us
were meant to be.

Not you.

Not them.

Not even me.

So I will stop
following.

I will stop carrying
what was passed
from hand to hand
before it reached mine.

I will leave the forest
without needing to know

who—or what—
was waiting
at its center.

That is yours alone.

May you find
your peace with it.

Channeled Duck

I heard her through

a sponge

Muffled kind of

Melodic

Gently holding me

saying

“He is okay

He is safe.

You are safe.

You could let him go.

I’m sorry that happened to you.”

I didn’t know it

But it was something I needed

to hear.

Not all the other layers

Of fog

I’ve heard

So long that began to push me into

a permanence

To propel me into a

Larger place of uncertainty.

No, this small piece

of peace

that took me from'

the pain spewing for months

from madness

to clarity.

That he sees himself.

Or is starting to.

Maybe he doesn’t.

It doesn’t matter.

What’s done is done.

It can’t be undone.

It can’t erase.

We can let go.

Once I knew I could.

I breathed.

I began to let go.

I didn’t know that’s what it was.

This fear

This whole time.

Sirenas

Me imagino caminando
por los chorros
de los que hablaba
mi apá.

Una leyenda
de sirenas
esperándome en el agua.

Mis pies en el pasto,
los pedazos mojados
sintiendo
cada parte fría
de mi madre,
honrándola,
agradeciéndole.

Me lavo
dentro de sus
aguas frías.

Me despiertan.
Me alivian
los dolores internos,
todos los pequeños
infiernos.

Y las sirenas
vuelven a cantar
conmigo
otra vez.

Felices.

Porque desde niña
suelen
no oír mi voz.

The Spoils

Author’s Note

The Spoils began in 2022, inspired by Massive Attack’s song of the same name.

A lot of my poetry, art, and short fiction is inspired by music. For a long time, I felt insecure about naming the songs behind the work because I worried about what people might think.

Then one day I thought: Who cares?

I love to write. This is my gift. This is what I do.

Fuck what people think.

The original idea was simple: a dead wife watches the person she loves build a life with someone new. When she finally meets his new wife, she realizes she loves her too—not as a replacement, and not only because he loves her, but because something between them feels familiar.

She tells him: Be happy. Let me rest.

As my understanding of my gender and sexuality changed, the story changed with me.

After what I experienced late last year and early this year, I began writing A Way, Part I and A Way, Part II. I later archived them because I could not finish the story.

Only afterward did I realize that A Way had been The Spoils all along—the story I had been trying to write since 2022, but fucking whitewashed.

I had made everyone white. I had stripped away the queerness, the culture, and nearly everything that had once made the story mine.

I was trying to find a way out of the story because I was also trying to find a way out of what was happening inside me.

Returning to The Spoils was not simply a revision.

It was a reclamation.

I gave the characters their histories back. I allowed their love to become Indigenous, diasporic, queer, complicated, and expansive. I stopped forcing it into a shape that made other people more comfortable. Or even me comfortable with what I was dealing with at the moment, or even still. Because in truth I had to sit with why I made A Way white washed and void of queerness, indigeneity, void of all the things that were me, and my becoming, my reconnection, my relationship with myself. I had disconnected with myself with A Way and it had shown.

The Spoils is not the story I originally wrote.

It is the story that survived long enough to return to me.

It was 3:33 in the morning.

Manuela was asleep beside Lance, one arm tucked beneath her pillow, her breathing soft and even. Lance turned his long-haired head toward her and watched for a moment.

He did not want to wake her.

Yasmina was waiting, and he did not have much time.

He slid quietly from the bed. From the drawer beside him, he took the ring he had given Yasmina all those years ago and threaded its chain around his neck—a promise he had made her that someday...

Someday.

Yasmina opened her eyes.

“Not this again.”

It was 3:33 in the morning, and there she was, sprawled across the cold floor of the catacombs where they had first met.

Same place. Same date. Same tiny ritual.

Every year, they were given a few hours to see one another. They talked. They laughed. They touched. They tried to fit twelve months of longing into the narrow space between 3:33 and sunrise.

But this time, something felt different.

Yasmina was tired.

And somehow, before Lance even arrived, she knew that he was tired too.

You see, Lance and Yasmina were soulmates.

The once-in-a-lifetime kind. The kind of love that makes people believe the universe has hidden a promise inside something as small and ridiculous as a plastic ring from a Cracker Jack box.

They met in the catacombs beneath the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, surrounded by tourists who had come to New York to feel haunted for ninety minutes.

Lance and Yasmina were the only New Yorkers in the group.

Of course they found each other.

It was love that brought them into the same underground room. It was kismet. Or bad luck. Or the kind of cosmic joke that only becomes funny once everyone involved is dead.

Their families came from different diasporas—his from central Mexico, hers from the Catatumbo region of Colombia. Their histories did not match exactly, but the missing pieces did.

Lance’s grandmother still called their family Nahua, although much of the language had been prayed, punished, and shamed out of the generations between them. When she wanted him to listen with more than his ears, she called him by his entire name:

Lance Citlali Ortega Temoxtle.

Ortega was the name the world recognized.

Temoxtle was the part that had survived.

His grandmother gave him fragments instead of lessons: stories about crowded homes, obligations that did not end with one couple, and kinships the Church taught their descendants to hide. She never claimed the old ways were perfect. Only that family had once been allowed more than one shape.

Yasmina’s grandmother carried different fragments. She spoke of their Barí ancestors and of children whose lives could bind more than one father to their care. The details changed depending on who was telling the story, but the lesson did not: belonging created responsibility.

Neither Lance nor Yasmina mistook inherited fragments for instructions. They simply recognized the same stubborn truth inside them—love had always been larger than the rules built to contain it.

So when they spoke to one another, they understood the sentences beneath the sentences.

It felt as though their ancestors could hear them.

“I love you” came easily.

So did passion. So did romance.

So did fighting, misunderstanding, hanging up dramatically, calling back three minutes later, and pretending neither of them had been staring at the phone.

They were very good at loving each other.

They were also very good at being annoying about it.

After three years, three months, and three days, Lance knelt before Yasmina and asked her to marry him.

She said yes before he finished.

Their families lost their minds.

Because what Latin American family would not? What had been scattered by displacement, hatred, poverty, and war appeared to be gathering itself again in one tiny neighborhood in Queens.

There was enough food for three weddings. There were aunties crying before the party began. There were cousins who had not spoken in years standing beside each other because nobody was going to miss the chisme. Someone brought a speaker large enough to communicate with the dead.

Lance and Yasmina danced to “Luna” by Zoé, a song they both loved.

For one perfect moment, she threw her head back laughing.

At least, Lance thought she was laughing. Yasmina sometimes laughed like a cartoon villain, so he smiled and pulled her closer.

Then blood ran from her nose.

Her eyes rolled back.

Her knees buckled.

And then—

And then—

And then there was no sentence large enough to contain what happened next.

They called an ambulance.

There was nothing anyone could do.

A blood clot in Yasmina’s brain made it quick. She barely understood what was happening before she was gone.

Lance, however, understood every second.

Yasmina died.

Something in Lance died with her.

Her funeral was held that Sunday.

When the wake had emptied and only Lance, Yasmina, and Moira remained, Lance asked Moira to marry them.

Moira stared at him.

She had been Yasmina’s woo-woo friend since college, which was how Lance described her spirituality whenever he wanted to irritate them both. Moira read cards, knew prayers her grandmother told her never to repeat over the phone, and had once cleansed Lance’s apartment after he bought a mirror from Craigslist.

“You understand she is dead,” Moira said carefully.

“I understand.”

“You understand this is not legally anything.”

“I don’t care.”

Moira looked at Yasmina’s body, then back at Lance.

“What exactly are you asking me to do?”

“Witness us.”

So she did.

She did not resurrect Yasmina. She did not cast a spell. She simply stood between the living and the dead and witnessed a promise made too late.

A ring went on Yasmina’s finger.

Another went on Lance’s.

At 3:33 in the afternoon, Yasmina Ochoa Ruiz was buried.

At 3:30 the following morning, drunk as a skunk, Lance wandered outside the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, crying his little eyes out.

At 3:33, Yasmina woke up screaming in the catacombs.

“WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE FUCK? NOOOOO—WHAT?”

She sat upright.

She looked alive.

Well. Not exactly.

She felt lighter. Present, but not entirely. When she looked down, there was a ring on her hand.

“When the hell did I get married?”

She pushed herself from the floor and wandered through the tunnels until she found the locked church doors. She wondered whether she could walk through them.

She could.

That was when she realized she was, indeed, very dead.

The knowledge brought with it a profound sadness.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked the homeless man slumped beside the church.

The homeless man was Lance.

“Lance?”

He looked up.

His mouth opened.

He stared at her as though he had seen a—

Well.

Whatever the hell she was.

He scrambled backward, palms scraping the pavement.

“Wh—wh—what—”

“I’m not doing well,” he finally managed.

Yasmina saw the ring on his hand.

She looked at her own.

Then she looked back at him.

“When did we get hitched, Lance?”

“Uhh. I can explain. Moira—”

“MOIRA? The one who does all the brujería shit?”

“Oh, shut up. Stop acting like you don’t do that shi—” Lance stopped.

He stared at the empty space in front of him.

“Wait. Why am I talking to nothing?”

“BECAUSE I AM NOT NOTHING, YOU IDIOT. I AM YOUR WIFE, APPARENTLY.”

Yasmina kicked him in the thigh.

He felt it.

They both froze.

Lance reached for her.

His hand did not pass through her. It closed around her wrist.

“Yazzy?”

“Oh, shit.”

She dropped on top of him, kissing him and crying on the sidewalk.

A man sleeping beneath a coat a few feet away lifted his head.

“Y’all are nasty.”

They laughed so hard they could barely stand.

They walked around the city. They grabbed a slice. They talked over each other. They kissed against buildings, found somewhere private enough to make questionable decisions, and tried not to wonder what any of it meant.

Near sunrise, Lance led her toward the subway.

He swiped his MetroCard.

The first edge of morning touched the station.

Yasmina vanished.

Lance lost his fucking mind.

There was no gentler way to put it.

He was hospitalized. No one could convince him that she had not been real. Eventually, he learned to say less about what happened. People called that improvement.

Almost a year later, Moira returned to New York for the anniversary of Yasmina’s death.

At the memorial, relatives whispered about how Lance had lost it. How he claimed he had seen Yasmina. How he swore he had touched her.

Moira’s eyes widened.

“Oh, shit.”

She found him leaning against a wall.

“So,” she said. “You saw her?”

Lance turned slowly.

“You fucking believe me?”

Moira looked just as shocked as he did.

“Wow,” she said. “You must have loved the shit out of her.”

His face crumpled.

Moira’s eyes filled too.

“Go back tonight,” she said. “Same place. Same time.”

“You knew this would happen?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know she’ll be there?”

“I don’t.” Moira squeezed his arm. “But whatever opened between you did not feel finished.”

That night, Lance returned to the catacombs.

At 3:33, Yasmina opened her eyes.

Like clockwork, he came.

Like clockwork, she returned.

It was kismet.

They met once a year.

The second year, Lance brought her a cupcake crushed inside his coat pocket. Yasmina complained that death had apparently not improved his ability to transport baked goods, then ate the frosting from his thumb.

The third year, they fought because he had changed apartments without telling her. She accused him of erasing the life they had shared. He accused her of expecting him to preserve a museum he could barely survive entering. They spent forty minutes refusing to speak, then watched the sunrise from opposite ends of the same bench.

By the fourth year, they had begun asking each other questions neither could answer.

What did Yasmina do during the months she was gone?

Why did Lance remember some days with perfect cruelty and lose entire weeks of her face?

Were they continuing a marriage, repeating one, or building something neither life nor death had prepared them to name?

They still laughed. They still touched. They still loved each other.

But they were no longer frozen inside the night she died.

Then one morning, Lance arrived late.

Yasmina noticed immediately that the ring was no longer on his finger. He wore it on a chain around his neck.

“Ohhh,” she said, smiling. “You had a date.”

“Don’t be jealous. I didn’t—”

“Wait a minute. Who said I’m jealous?”

“You’re not?”

“I’m happy for you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Why?”

“Because the old you would have punched me by now.”

Yasmina laughed.

He laughed too, but nervously.

She looked at him with a tenderness he remembered, although something inside it had changed. Death had not erased her. Time had simply continued shaping her in ways neither of them understood.

“It has been a long time, Lance.”

“I know.”

“You deserve to date. Fuck. Love. Live.”

“Not move on,” he said quickly.

“Fine. Don’t move on.” She took his hand. “Move with.”

He looked at her.

“Loving someone else does not mean we love each other less.”

He wanted to believe her.

But somewhere beneath the love, beneath the grief, beneath everything his grandmother had tried to teach him, Lance still believed that one bond had to replace another.

One wife had to be real.

The other had to become a secret.

Two years later, Lance met Manuela Martínez.

She was Guatemalan American, born into a Kaqchikel Maya family, and entirely unimpressed by his habit of turning every minor inconvenience into a Greek tragedy.

Manuela laughed with her whole body. She kept emergency tamales in her freezer, killed every plant except rosemary, and refused to let Lance call avoidance “processing.” She had a life before him, plans that did not include him, and a tenderness that never required her to become small.

They became friends first. Then the kind of friends who called each other for no reason. Then the kind who stopped pretending there was no reason.

Because she understood what it meant for a family to love a language it had nearly lost, Manuela began learning the Nahuatl Lance’s grandmother still carried. She never treated it as hers. She learned it because she loved the parts of him that had survived without his permission.

Lance told her about Yasmina as the woman he had lost.

He told her about the proposal, the funeral, and the ring.

He did not tell her Yasmina still returned.

The longer he waited, the less the silence resembled grief and the more it resembled a lie.

Years later, Yasmina woke earlier than usual.

A beat called to her from beyond the catacombs—a rhythm joyful and settled, as though it had finally found its peace.

She followed it through the city and into a small garden in Brooklyn.

There was a wedding.

She recognized old friends immediately. People she had loved. People who had once stood over her casket and cried.

Then she saw the source of the rhythm.

Lance was dancing with a woman in white.

He was married.

He was at peace.

He had found love again.

A banner hung between two trees:

CONGRATULATIONS, MANUELA AND LANCE.

Yasmina smiled.

“I’m happy to see you again,” Moira said behind her, already crying. “Even if it’s only for a little while.”

Yasmina turned and grinned.

“It’s everything I could have wanted, except it’s in the borough I hate most.”

Moira laughed through her tears.

“I don’t even know her,” Yasmina said, looking back toward the bride, “but there’s something about her.”

Lance dipped Manuela and lifted her into a kiss.

“That was nauseating,” Moira said.

“I know.” Yasmina giggled. “I would have loved it.”

Moira pulled her into a tender embrace.

“Sometimes, when I hug her, something feels like you,” she admitted. “It isn’t you. I know that. But sometimes I wish it were. I miss you.”

Yasmina kissed her cheek.

“You don’t have to miss me so hard. I’m everywhere.”

“I know,” Moira whispered.

As Yasmina began to leave the garden, a hand touched her arm.

She turned.

The bride stood behind her.

For one suspended moment, neither woman spoke.

Manuela’s smile faded—not from fear, but surprise, as though Yasmina’s face had interrupted a thought she had been having for years.

Yasmina felt it too.

Not recognition exactly. She knew they had never met.

But something warm and immediate passed between them. The noise of the wedding seemed to fall away.

“Hi,” Manuela said.

“Hi.”

“I don’t know you.”

Yasmina laughed softly. “That is usually how meeting someone works.”

Manuela laughed too, but she kept looking at her.

“I know. I just—have you ever met someone and felt like you were already in the middle of knowing them?”

Yasmina held her gaze a moment longer than she meant to.

“Yes.”

Music continued behind them. People danced. Glasses clinked. But the air between the two women remained strangely still.

“Are you here with Lance?” Manuela asked.

Yasmina’s expression shifted.

“You could say that.”

“I think I’ve seen you before. In a picture, maybe.” Manuela tilted her head. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you.” Yasmina smiled. “But you look lovely.”

Manuela’s face softened.

“Your eyes,” Yasmina added. “They make me feel like home.”

“Thank you.” Manuela touched the edge of one eyelid without thinking.

Their eyes held.

“Manuela!” Lance called from across the garden.

She turned.

“I’ll be right there!”

When she looked back, Yasmina had already stepped away.

“Wait,” Manuela called.

Yasmina glanced over her shoulder.

“What’s your name?”

Yasmina only smiled.

“Congratulations, Manuela.”

Then she disappeared into the crowd.

Manuela stood there, watching the place where she had been.

She had the strangest feeling that she had just missed something.

Or perhaps found it too early.

It was 3:33 in the morning.

Manuela slept beside Lance.

He watched her breathe, then slipped quietly from the bed.

Yasmina was waiting.

When he reached the catacombs, darkness was already thinning toward morning.

“Hey. Sorry I’m late. I—”

“You got married,” Yasmina said, smiling.

His face dropped.

“How did you— I was going to tell you.”

“Were you?”

“Eventually.”

“Eventually,” she repeated, folding her arms. “Before or after I found out for myself?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Yasmina stared at him.

Then she laughed.

“Oh, Lance.”

“What?”

“Your girl is lovely.”

He blinked.

“What?”

“Manuela. She is beautiful.”

“Yasmina—”

“And funny, apparently. Excellent taste in music.” Yasmina tilted her head. “Questionable taste in men, but nobody’s perfect.”

“Can you not?”

“What?” she asked innocently. “How could I be jealous? She is perfect. Hell, if I weren’t with yo—”

“Stop.”

The sharpness in his voice cut through her laughter.

Yasmina went quiet.

Lance looked away, jaw tight.

“Don’t make jokes like that.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my wife.”

“And so is she.”

“It isn’t the same.”

“No,” Yasmina said gently. “It isn’t.”

She stepped closer.

“Look at me.”

He would not.

“Lance.”

Slowly, he lifted his eyes.

“Aren’t you in love with her?”

His expression folded inward.

“Yes.”

“And when you are with her, are you happy?”

He swallowed.

“Yes.”

“Then be happy, my love.”

“I can’t just—”

“Because loving you does not mean wanting you lonely.”

His eyes filled.

Yasmina took his hands.

“You keep saying one of us must stop being your wife for the other one to count.”

“It isn’t the same.”

“No,” she said gently. “It isn’t. She has her life with you. I had mine. She did not steal it, and you did not give it away.”

“But I promised you someday.”

“And you kept your promise for every day we were given.”

“That wasn’t enough.”

“No,” she said softly. “It wasn’t.”

He began to cry.

Yasmina rested her forehead against his.

“I still love you,” he said.

“I know.”

“I love her too.”

“I know that too.”

“How?”

“Because when you say her name, you look alive.”

He broke then, folding into her.

Yasmina held him tightly.

“Be happy,” she whispered into his hair. “I am happy for you.”

“I don’t understand how.”

“There are no jealousies here,” she said. “Only love.”

Then her old grin flickered across her face.

“And perhaps my blessing to keep kissing your beautiful wife.”

A wet, unwilling laugh escaped him.

“There you are,” Yasmina whispered.

The first edge of sunlight reached into the catacombs.

Yasmina removed her wedding ring.

Lance’s smile vanished.

“Lance Citlali Ortega Temoxtle,” she said, using every part of his name the way his grandmother had when she wanted his ancestors to hear. “You and I were together in life for three years, three months, and three days. In death, I held on to you for much longer than I needed to.”

“Yasmina—”

“In love, I will always find you. In this life. In another life. In every timeline where we are lucky enough to meet.”

She placed the ring in his palm and closed his fingers around it.

“You found your peace, baby.”

“No.”

“So let me find mine.”

His face crumpled.

“How will I know you are all right? How will I talk to you? How will I—”

The sunlight moved over her shoulder.

Her body began coming apart inside his arms—not vanishing at once as she had every other year, but loosening slowly into light.

“Oh my God.”

He grabbed her tightly.

“Please don’t go. Don’t leave me. Please.”

“I love you in every timeline,” she whispered into his hair.

The wind and morning took what remained of her, lifting her into the air until Lance was holding nothing but the ring in his closed hand.

Then there was nothing.

The train back to Brooklyn was miserable and lonely.

Yet the closer Lance came to home, the more something hopeful moved through him.

Yasmina deserved peace. He knew that.

Still, she did not feel gone.

Maybe Carl Sagan was right. Maybe they were all star stuff, and Yasmina had simply become part of everything.

Maybe another version of them was still somewhere, living their little love story.

Maybe love did not disappear when its shape changed.

Maybe it remembered.

Years before Lance met Manuela, a semi-truck struck her car.

By morning, she needed a new heart and the corneas that would preserve her sight.

At 3:33, the hospital received word of a match.

The donor was a young woman named only by the surname her family later allowed them to share:

Ochoa.

Manuela carried the name privately.

She never knew the woman’s first name.

When Lance reached home, he removed his shoes and pants and slid quietly into bed.

Manuela turned toward him and put her arms around him.

He held her.

She made a small humming sound as she guided one of his hands to her chest.

Lance froze.

He knew that melody.

His eyes filled before he could stop them.

“Luna,” he whisper-sang, his voice breaking. “No me abandones más...”

The tears came hard then.

Manuela pulled him closer as his body began to shake.

“I told you,” she whispered, stroking his hair. “You’re all good now. Shh. You’re okay.”

But Lance only sobbed harder.

She held him until his breathing slowed. Then she turned fully to face him.

In the Nahuatl she had learned for him, Manuela asked softly, “What was her name?”

Lance stared at her.

“Yasmina.”

Manuela pressed her forehead against his.

“Ochoa,” she whispered.

Her voice broke.

Lance’s eyes widened.

Manuela kissed his hands. She placed them gently over her eyes, kissed them again, and brought them to rest over her heart.

Still speaking in Nahuatl, she said, “Nothing in this world is coincidence. It is memory. It remembered, and it brought us back together.”

She began to cry.

“She said hello.”

They embraced.

“I’m sorry, Manny,” Lance choked out. “I didn’t sa—”

“Not now,” she whispered, tenderness and hurt sharing the same breath. “I love you. But you should have told me. When the time is right, we’ll talk.”

She held him against the heart that had once beaten inside Yasmina, while his hands rested beneath the eyes through which Yasmina had looked at her and felt at home.

No one had been left with the spoils.

At least now, in this love, they were whole.

Siren Song

I walked barefoot across the floor,
Suka trailing behind me.

Another song from my playlist hits
in this cazimi.

I look at my sweet girl and ask
if she would like to be sung to.

I could make you smile.

She wags her tail,
and as I raise my head,
I am transported.

Nearly twenty years pass,
and when I look down,
the floor is plastic—

pale and sticky.

I am in a kitchen,
and I can hear someone singing:

Help you dress yourself up fancy.

I look up at him,
holding his gaze.

And bathe you when you get sore.

It’s me.

In love.

I’ll be good, I think I could.

My eyes are transfixed on his—

oceans.

Be all you could want
and more and more.

I was begging.

Be proud when you dazzle the wanderers.

He was smiling
while I was begging.

Glitter your eyes for the town.

I didn’t even notice
that I was drowning.

And I would have gladly drowned.

Tell every last boy that you’re my man.

For that love,
I was suffocating—

willingly devoured
by insects,

so long as I stayed
his.

I could feel the roaches crawling.

The bedbugs.

Till the siren comes calling, calling.

Then,
I am in the kitchen.

It’s driving me evil, evil.

I am sitting across from my father,
my mother beside me.

—I called myself evil?
I wasn’t evi—

Momma was a heartbreaker,
loved you the same way I do,
but I got so much wickedness and sin.

I was a child when my mother told me
about her beauty-pageant days,

about how she had boys lined up
but only wanted my father.

I love you the best way I know how.

She told me recently
how she had always blamed herself
for everything,

how she never believed
she was worth anything,

how she had never loved herself.

When the stars are exploding in your eyes.

I told them, in that kitchen,
that a man had stolen what was mine.

No, it won’t be long until you’re running.

And he wasn’t the first.

No, it won’t be long until you’re running.

I looked into my father’s eyes
and told him
this happened to me
when I was a child.

No, it won’t be long until you’re running.

His eyes filled with tears
as my mother’s face filled with anger.

That is because no man is like your father.

My eyes rose.

My mother’s eyes rose.

’Cause I’m evil.

He has never touched a woman like that.

Never?

Well, my father said, we’re mar—

So it was okay
because you were married.

It was okay for him
because I was family,

because he allowed his friends to,

because who would believe her,

because I was blacked-out drunk,

because I reminded you
of your ex-wife.

’Cause I’m evil.

I’m sorry.

My father swallowed his words.

I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.

Oh, babe,
I hear the blond boy tell me
as he gently touches my face.

You’re not evil.

Then, maybe a year later,
he tells me
that anyone in his position
would have dumped me
ages ago.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I break up with him
and tell him:

It’s me.
I had moved on.
I had my reasons.

And for years,
I believed
that it had been me.

For years,
the people who loved me
told me it hadn’t been,

until I told them:

No.

It genuinely was.

He had put up with too much.

I was too much.

And I am
so sorry.

I let you believe
you weren’t worthy of love.

I accepted this—

as proof against myself.

I begged.

I’m sorry I let you believe
those horrible words you heard.

I made excuses for them.

I’m sorry I let you believe
this was the truth

because of the evil
that was done to you,

because of the blame
your mother placed on you,

because of things
beyond your control.

I’m sorry I let you believe it.

I’m sorry I almost took you
from this plane
time and time again,

finding ease in

Ophelia,
Anna,
Lavinia,
Sylvia—

thinking you were unworthy
of joy,

of living,

of breathing,

of simply touching rain.

I’m so sorry.

I didn’t listen to you.

I’m sorry.

fa mnypquasuca.

Fa, mue zemistysuca.

You are stars exploding.

I love you.

Author’s note: This poem interweaves lyrics from “Siren Song” by Bat for Lashes.

Kill My Soul

A portrait here.

See my soul
screaming at me
for all the times
it was asked
if what it was saying
was true,

only to have
its mouth sewn shut
before answering,

to be told
to shut up,
to stop lying
to the poor girl,

to stop messing
with her mind
again.

You see them here,
ripped open,
yelling
at all you naysayers,
from their pit
up through her gullet,

and still… you…

Still,
you doubt?

Will you not stop
until you’ve killed her?

I Have

Quick, run.

Find Nyx.

Her ear is infected
again.

She’s running away.
Brothers follow
into my Grand Library.

I imagine
this is how Alexandria
must have looked
after the fall.

Eldest manages to grab her.

Brother, let me—

No. I got this.

Please, let me—

NO.

I watch him
struggle and sway
until she is subdued,

as the room begins to rumble.

I walk toward them.

Poor kitty.

She looks filthy.

Couldn’t fuck you up
if she tried.

Salivating,
tilted little head,
dirtied up and wet.

She turns it
to the right,
slightly up.

The walls begin to crack.

Brother, let me he—

I can do thi—

I know, but let me—

NO.

I stand still,
the hard rocking unsettling me.

I look up.

BROTHER.

Part of the ceiling,
or whatever held above us,
collapses.

I go to grab
the soothed feline.

Brother pulls brother
and they run behind me.

We are so close
to the exit.

The library opens
its stomach.

I grab for something.
Anything.
Something pretending
to hold.

Younger trips.

Oldest falls back with him.

And as he falls,
he clings onto me.

I blame myself
for the trip.

Somehow,
it’s always my fault.

And I don’t know why I—

STAND UP STRAIGHT.

take—

DON’T FALL.

the—

STAY UP.

bla—

They keep shouting.

And I say to myself:

DON’T FALL.
STAY UP.
YOU HAVE TO HOLD THEM.
THIS IS YOURS.
HOLD THEM.
DON’T FALL.

What if you just…

let go?

so dizzy
this feeling

this holiness
of letting go

of the pole.

I open my arms.

Nyx rises.

And Night falls.

Everywhere around me.

The library has collapsed.

And nothing.

I am falling.

My brothers have dissolved
into air,
or something less,
or sublime.

I can’t understand.

I am elated.

Everything—
nothingness—
is so much.

I feel at ease,
like something is sorting
within myself.

I understand
what was destruction

and what was desire.

I don’t understand ho—

I am falling in the dark.

I am alone
in the dark.

How am I breathing?

I begin to forget.

I start to cry.

This feels familiar.

This is what it’s like to die.

As the panic courses through me,
I hear a whisper:

Grieve this.

Eventually,
you will forget
the shape
of what was never yours.

You are alone,

and that is not ill.

You are not empty.

You have.

The heartbeat in my head
slows slightly.

I have.

I word it quietly,
almost as if to keep it.

To remember.

I close my eyes

and feel what it would be
to embrace myself.

Cho iza.