I’ve Taken Up Smoking

Voices float up from the streets below,

though none of them could ever compare to yours.

They call to me, asking me to join them in the nightlife,

to see the city, see the endless artificial stars they’ve decorated it with.

But I ignore them.

It’s not worth it if you’re not there.

I’ve taken up smoking, not because I want or need to,

but just because you used to,

and the smell of the smoke gives the illusion that you’ve only just left.

I often talk to the portrait of you on the wall

(the only tangible thing you left me),

sometimes for so long that I can almost believe that the painted lips smile back at me,

and the flower held in your hand is being extended towards me as a gift,

something of value, rather than a prop.

But in the end, when I finally stop dreaming and open my eyes,

the portrait is lifeless.

In the end, smoking is just a time-filler.

In the end, the city is a far better place than here.

And in the end, I know you’re not coming back.

Excerpt from Red Memories

You wake up to a shattered windshield. It’s the first thing you notice, and then as your eyes begin to focus you see what’s beyond it. There’s a road with tall, vibrant red grass on either side of it. The car you’re in is in the grass, not too far from the road. You look up through your cracked sunroof and see that the sky is completely dark. You assume that it’s nighttime, but then realize there are no stars or moon. The only light comes from unnaturally tall lamposts, so high that you can barely see the ends of them. They dot the road inconsistently, glowing a faint sickly red in the darkness. You think that you should be distressed by this, but instead you feel nothing at all. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to be like.

All the windows of the car you’re sitting in are cracked, and the hood looks like an accordion. You look at your hands, which have cuts on the palms, and see scabs on your knees, although they don’t look fresh. You put a hand up to your head and it comes away with a dusting of something crusty and brownish. How did you crash your car? There’s no large objects nearby that you could hit into. You think that maybe you hit one of the lampposts, but no, none of them are close enough. So what happened?

There are so many questions that you’re unable to answer.

Is this even your car, or is it someone else’s? Where are you? Is this a road that you recognize, is there a town nearby? Is grass supposed to be that color? Is the sky supposed to be like that? Why are the lampposts that tall? What’s your name? How old are you? Where do you live?

You can’t remember.

Why?

It’s only then that you begin to feel something, only then that the numbness begins to wear off. First it’s the pain in your hands, knees, and head, then the cool air seeping through the cracks in the windows, and finally the terrible knot of fear in your stomach. You think you might throw up. Why can’t you remember? Who are you? Who? Are. You? Think, think! No, it’s okay, calm down, you’re dreaming. You must be dreaming. It’s the only explanation for this madness, for why you don’t know what’s going on and why everything is so strange. You start to cry, and in desperation you pinch yourself, thinking that surely it will wake you up. But you feel the pinch, and it hurts, and you’ve been awake this whole time. You’re not dreaming.

The Fisherman and the Star

There was once a boy who lived in a cabin by the sea. Nobody else on the island he resided on knew of him, for nobody knew the beach he lived on existed. But he was happy in his secluded seaside home, never feeling the need for company. Every morning at dawn he went out in his boat to catch fish, and every evening at dusk he returned home to cook his dinner. He often sat by the surf and sang to the sea. The fish always gathered in the shallows to hear him, for they had never heard a voice so beautiful. They allowed themselves to easily be caught by him, not minding feeding such a great musician. Even the birds were envious, and they circled abovehead to try to mimic his songs. The sea always sent him her prettiest shells and the sand always gave him his prettiest stones, and the boy made lovely necklaces and trinkets out of them.

One morning as he set out to sail, a storm broke loose. His ship was tossed and turned, his nets flew out into the sea and were lost, and he fell about this way and that. When the storm finally ended it was nighttime, and when the boy came to, he was in a place he had not seen before. His boat was nearby, battered but not completely broken. He was in an alcove of sorts, surrounded by weeping willows and with pearly rocks in the shallow, crystalline water. In the center of the alcove was a very small island with cadet blue grass and white flowers. On that island sat a woman. She had skin and hair the color of ivory and she wore a flowing dress that looked as if it was spun from white gold. Freckles glittered across her face and her eyes were as dark as obsidian. She was admiring the reflection of the willows in the water.

He sat staring at her in wonder for a long while until she finally looked up from the water and noticed him. She seemed startled, but not afraid, and they gazed at each other for a long while more.

“Who are you?” He finally asked her. “You cannot be mortal, for I have never seen a human as pure and beautiful as you.”

“I am a star,” she answered. “This is where I spend my time when I am unwanted in the sky.”

“Unwanted?” The boy exclaimed. It seemed preposterous.

“My mother, the Moon, thinks me too young to shine,” she answered sadly. “So she will send me down here every night until she thinks I am worthy to look upon the earth from above.”

“But where will you go when the sun rises?” The boy asked.

“Back to the sky to sleep.”

They talked for the rest of the night, and when the sun began to rise, the boy promised he would come visit her the next evening.

For months he visited the Star. By day he caught his fish and sang to the sea, and by night he found his way back to the alcove to visit her. As the seasons began to shift, the boy began to fall in love with her. He grew lonely in his cabin by the sea, wishing for company for the first time in his life. One night, he asked the Star to marry him.

She shook her head and wept like the trees that surrounded them. “My sweet boy, I wish I could.”

“Why can’t you?” The boy cried.

“I am a star and you are not. I cannot stay on the earth in the day, and once my mother sees me fit to shine at night, I shall never return. And you cannot come to the sky with me, for you would perish. Only stars can survive in the sky.”

“Then how do I become a star?” The boy asked.

The Star was quiet while she thought. The weeping willows swayed in the breeze and the stone glittered in the water. Finally she said, “I do not know. I must ask my mother.” Then the sun rose and she returned to the sky.

The next night the Star explained that the only way for him to become like her was to give up his soul to the sky. The boy thought about this for a long time before coming to the conclusion that the best way to do this was to throw himself to the sea. He knew that the water and sky traveled in cycles, so if his soul was in the sea it was impossible for it to not reach the sky at some point. So, just before the sun rose, he promised the Star that he would meet her in the sky soon.

Once the boy returned home, he said goodbye to his ship, his nets, and his cabin. He walked into the water and the fishes shook their heads sadly, heartbroken that they wouldn’t hear his song anymore. The birds cackled above him, pleased that they would soon be the best musicians once more. The boy then threw himself into the sea, and the water gently brought him down to the depths where his soul sank into the sand.

When the boy awoke, he was in the arms of the Star and in a wide void of glittering darkness. He asked where they were, and she said her home. The Moon, finally convinced that her daughter was bright enough, let them both stay happily in the sky, never to return to the earth. And there the boy resided there with the Star, her sisters, and the Moon, singing sweet songs to the earth below until the end of time.

Painting Mercy

It was raining when I saw her fall from the edge of the cliff. I will always remember that. The rain. How it beat against the window in paradiddles, like a drummer that was impatient to start the song when the rest of his mates were still tuning their guitars. How it blurred my view of her as she fell, making her look like one of my gouache paintings when I added too much water. How it pelted against me as I ran outside, ran to the edge of the surf. How it froze my skin when I took off my sweater and ran into the ocean. How it made the water rough as I swam to her. How it got in my eyes as I dragged her limp body back to land. How it washed the blood off her head and onto the sand as I carried her back to the house. And how it stopped the second she woke up.

She couldn’t speak for a long time. Or maybe she could and just chose not to. She just stared. Even her tears were silent. But I sat next to her the whole time, and I’d like to think that she was grateful for that. I brought her food that she refused to eat. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes away from the cliff, which we could see from my bedroom window. I had let her rest in my bed, it was the most comfortable. I was fine on the couch.

Sometimes I talked to her, just to distract her from whatever war she was fighting in her head. I told her about the town, how I was usually the only one up in the wee hours because everybody else liked to wake up late. I told her that I lived away from the rest of the civilians by choice, that I didn’t like the noise and company. I told her my name, that it was my father’s before mine. I told her my parents were away and didn’t like to visit. They’re in a different country now, one where there’s not so much water. I told her how I liked to paint the sea when the sunset hit it just right, or when the stars reflected off the top of the waves and the moon turned the water silver. I told her that I could show her my paintings sometime if she wanted. She didn’t answer me.

After three days she finally looked at me. Her irises were blue and had freckles. They reminded me of the sky when the weather was peaceful. I remember thinking that I would have liked to drown in them. Could one drown in the sky, or was that only limited to the water?

When she spoke, her voice sounded like the rain she had fallen through days earlier. Hushed. Beautiful. Sad. “I didn’t jump.”

“Pardon?”

“I didn’t jump,” she repeated. “I was pushed.”

I thought back to when I saw her fall. She had been the only one on the cliff. I saw no one attack her. But I believed her. How could I not, when she said it like that? “Alright then.”

When she smiled it was like the sun. It was warm, it was beautiful, and you realized that you could never live without it. You couldn’t look away no matter how much it hurt. You would do anything for that smile. And you couldn’t help but smile back.

“Do you remember who pushed you?” I asked. I would have liked to throttle them for hurting her like this. But then again, if she never fell, I never would have met her.

“No.” The smile I suddenly loved more than anything in the whole went away and I wanted to kill myself. “I don’t remember anything from before you found me.”

“Oh,” was all I could say. I felt sad, then. She had lived a whole life before this, and now it was gone forever and she was never getting it back. Just blown away, like sand on a windy day. Blown away like something that didn’t matter. How could memories be lost so easily? It didn’t seem fair that something so valuable could be taken away like that. I wanted to cry.

“It’s okay,” she said. She put a hand to my shoulder. It was cold through my shirt, still wet and salty despite having left the ocean a long time ago. Her hand shimmered in the weak sunlight. “I don’t mind.”

“What’s your name?” I asked after a long time.

“Mercy.” The way she said it was sharp like a blade. A blade that I would have stabbed myself with over and over, just to experience the pleasure of hearing it again.

She started eating after that. I learned that she didn’t like sweet food. Which was fine, because I didn’t either. Mostly I made us fish because that’s the only food that people eat around here. She was fine with eating that because it was salty. She ate it ravenously, really. Her teeth were sharp. She still didn’t talk much, only short conversations. But I coveted the words we exchanged like a dragon hoards gold.

I gave her my sister’s old clothes. They were around the same size as clothes I had found her in.

“Your sister won’t mind?” She said when she came out of the bathroom to show off one of her new outfits. It was a black sundress that contrasted against her pearl-colored skin and bright red hair. Her hair wasn’t like fire. No, that was too cliché. It was like a bouquet of monarch butterflies, I decided. It fluttered and was soft and smelled like flowers.

“She won’t mind,” I confirmed. Dead people don’t mind anything at all.

“Will you paint for me?” She asked one day. I agreed and told her to wait there while I grabbed my easel and brushes. I soon returned and went out onto the porch with her. It was still damp from the precipitation that had gathered during the night, but neither of us minded. I began painting the cliff like usual. She watched me in silence, tracing the blue, green, and gray strokes with her eyes.

Her voice startled me when she said, “You should paint me falling.”

And so I did.

“Why do you let me stay here?” She asked one day. We were sitting in the sand, watching the waves roll by. Somewhere a seagull cried out in triumph, probably discovering a crab or french fry or another tasty snack. I envied that seagull. To be pleased by something so trivial as a small morsel of food.

“Because I’m lonely and you have nowhere else to go.” It came out harsher than I meant to. But she laughed anyway. It trickled out of her mouth like honey.

“Then I’ll stay until you’re not lonely anymore.” She rested her head on my shoulder. Her butterfly hair tickled against my cheek.

I whispered, “Okay.”

The first time I heard her sing, I thought that I would die. It was a sound that you couldn’t hear, not if you didn’t really listen. But it was there, it was everywhere. And it was beautiful. It sounded like water in the springtime. It sounded like fireflies at twilight. It sounded like nothing and everything else in the whole world. It sounded like death.

It was during dinner when she asked me, “Why do none of the townspeople visit you?”

I said that none of them liked me. I left out the part that I didn’t like any of them either. I was fine with my house, my house that was all windows and wood. My house that could keep out floods, no matter the type. She brushed my hair behind my ear and smiled my favorite smile. She said that it was impossible for none of them to like me. And as always, I agreed with her. I would always agree with her. Forever.

Ortiz

Prologue

When I was little, my mother would teach me things. She taught me to properly cook a meal that would serve and satisfy thirteen. She taught me how to behave when strangers came over, though those visits were very rare. She taught me to play nice with my siblings, to play even nicer with my cousins, and to not play at all with the kids down the hill. Sometimes she’d tell me what the leaves at the bottom of my teacup meant, or interpret the scraps of food that had been left on my plate. On rainy days I’d watch her read cards and she’d teach me about what they signified, though I mainly just enjoyed looking at their pictures. The things she said they predicted always frightened me, but I couldn’t help but be fascinated as well. Auntie Sapha would pitch in, too. She used to tell my siblings and cousins and me wonderful stories, ones about princesses and princes who were carried by dragons to kingdoms in the sky where they could live happily ever after. Auntie Sapha would often tease my mother, and although Mother always seemed very stern about it, I could tell that she was enjoying herself and loved her sister, loved all of us, very much. My cousins and siblings and I all loved Mother and Auntie Sapha back, loved their lessons, their stories, their wisdom. They were our role models; they were intelligent, they were kind, and they were perfect.

Of course that was all long ago, when I was a child still plagued by naïveté. I remember how it used to be, before I grew up, our happy family in our house on the hill. Nonna and Nonno, living peacefully in their old age. Mother and Father, content with the life they had made for each other. Auntie Sapha and Uncle Perkos, still schoolchildren at heart. My cousins, Wren, Thasha, and Nemmie, so witty and fun. My siblings, Ramona, Ernessa, and Clement, all so smart and sweet. Though we are still family, we are not all together anymore, and we are far away from happiness. The Ortiz’s haven’t been happy for a very long time, and we’ll continue on this way until someone can fix us.