¿Qué si existiera una persona perfecta? Una persona que supiera todo en el mundo y que nunca tuviera incertidumbres ni sintiera tristezas? Parte de mi siempre ha querido ser perfecta como los héroes de mis cuentos de hadas favoritos. Mi subconsciente siempre está averiguando exactamente como pensar, como actuar y que decir para agradarle a mis padres, a mis amigos, a mis maestros y hasta a las personas que ni me caen bien. Lo último que quisiera sería quedarme sola en este mundo. Cada decisión que hago debe de ser meticulosamente medida para crear la reacción química perfecta; un movimiento descuidado y todo explotaría en un instante, destruyendo todo y a todos en su camino.

Lastimar a los que más amo me aterroriza. La niebla en la noche me asusta y hasta pensar en perder a mi peluche favorito me causa angustia. Todo lo desconocido me da miedo. La muerte me mortifica. Cada vez que me doy cuenta de que estoy disfrutando algo en mi vida, me acuerdo de que un día todo se va a terminar. Quisiera entender a dónde se va lo terminado, pero eso es lo único que no puedo averiguar sin morir y pues me da miedo la muerte. A veces pienso, “¿si todo se termina, entonces cuál es el punto en vivir?”

Pero a veces, cuando los murmullos del viento lo deciden, puedo estar en paz. Puedo sonreír y reír y divertirme y amar y disfrutar y oler y probar y respirar. Las aseguranzas de que saber todo es inasible son las luces que desvanecen la oscuridad de los pensamientos que me gritan que nada vale la pena y que todo va a terminar muerto y destruido. Pero para que exista la luz tiene que también existir la oscuridad que me persigue y me recuerda que todo se acaba.

I am surprised that God would allow such a thing to happen in his creation. Though I shouldn't be surprised. God willing such... foodstuffs will become little more than a footnote in culinary history, its memory kept alive by influencers, despite to seem unique or different. Maybe, should God smile upon the makers of Pad Thai, he will grant them access to make something edible. Something a human being would not have to grimace their way through. A fake smile covering feelings of disgust and pity. Maybe.

I am ailed, mankind's longest foe holds me in its grip. It shake me like the Great San Francisco Earthquake. Its grip is icy old and cruel, like the Viking hands of the Northlands. It reaches into my mouth and down my throat and forces my body to take the air from my lungs with great brutal scoops. My body quivers like a child in the cold of the Sierra Nevada's. I will spare you the movements of my bowls, but know that my ailment is just as there as everywhere else. I feel helpless, a mutt left behind on the streets, alone, with no one to be there for them.

However my feelings of loneliness do not determine my circumstance. There is a fire inside of me. The Indomitable Human Spirit inside of me refuses to lose, to yield to such a foe. It will not back down. It refuses to die. It's empowered by the elixirs of my age, only emboldening it to fight back will the heavy hand of the boxer in the ring. I will not perish now, I hear it say in the darkness of the night. The cool bony hands of death tickle me now. My lineage has suffered worse for longer.

Fall proceeds, pleasant and cozy in essence, cut short with promises of bitter winds as mid-August approaches. From the states and Canada, swarms of orange and yellow make the journey of miles and miles; gray clouds are pulled taut, shadowing the verdant growth from the previous spring, and the wind subsequently finds its pace, following the seething rain. Subject to the elements, the monarch butterflies continue south, funneling towards Mexico; if the winter, or the rain, or the wind were slightly more vindictive than the last, it would wipe an entire generation. It is a matter of time that they ritually make the journey; then, it is a matter of timing that the future might survive to revisit the past. Each departure is a final testament; though, the nomadic nature tends to make us forgetful. 

I think now of my Lola, my grandma. Instead of the thousands of miles south, to Mexico, I might travel a number of miles farther west, to the Philippines. I recall in particular one night when I would have been seven or eight years old, tripping over my own feet, and my hand catching on the railing as I rushed down the stairs. I heard the Skype ringtone, and then I heard my dad; I was already treading the tile floor though, flinching as my bare feet made contact, before I heard either call for my attention. I made my way to my dad’s office. Laid out on his stomach, on the floor, my dad and grandma were setting a rapid pace for conversation over the phone; both infallible in their mother tongue of Tagalog and Ilocano. My dad would translate, pausing the flow of his speech, and my ears would heat, stumbling because I could not translate myself. In an attempt to replicate the language, the words felt wrong, even as they sat on my tongue. Fluency and pronunciation demanded restoration at a moment's notice, of which I was incapable of. I created a whirlwind with my words, a flutter of multicolored wings raging as the foreign speech tumbled from my tongue. My dad watched in usual encouragement, and, when I would finally appropriate the language, my Lola would respond because there is comfort in familiar exchange. 

She too probably experienced the same discomfort, as we both grasped tightly to three mutually deliberate words; “I love you”. Distinguishable from the previous and the inevitable next repetition, sometimes it was simply “I love you” or “I loveee youuuu”, “anak ko I love you”, “I love you I love you I love you”. My grandma’s face, handled like old leather, would crease with each word from her to me, from me to her; she emanated the love she spoke of, but it was also a reminder of the syntax that defined our love. Her “I love you’s'' implied the distance rather than the proximity; it made a statement, condemning the journey that was not revisited because the wind, or the rain, or even the storm had delayed it, but the language. Because I am her granddaughter “I love you” became an extension of myself. It was our hello; we found solitude in this language because it is all we shared. I have forgotten the warm embrace of my Lola’s voice, but now I recognize her features; with me, I carry not only her features but her love. Although isolated in America and Mexico, the monarch butterflies find refuge in each other, the familiar shade of orange and yellow, the darker outline of black, and the snap of wings; I know from my grandma, there is comfort in familiarity. Separated by seven thousand miles and a broken mother tongue, love managed to manifest itself between me and my grandma, expressing itself despite the limitations of distance and in defiance iof our languages.

I tell a story of my Lola in an attempt to reach her. In telling a story of monarchs revisiting the past, I tell a story of my grandma. On the cusp of forgetfulness, in the flush of autumn, I hold onto the memory of my grandma and her love. Years after her death, I think of her in fond memory and the love she gave unconditionally, endlessly, and generously. With each generation of monarchs after, love manifests; the future revisits the past, paying homage. I am forever grateful for the love from my grandma, my Lola. 

I’ve always been a dreamer. Ever since I was little I would fantasize about my future as an uber talented superfamous star that would shine so much brighter than everyone else. These fantasies spanded from being a professional cowgirl to a famous singer/songwriter. I even created a journal to put all my songs in. The plan was that every Wednesday I would write a new song. Being 8 years old at the time, that plan naturally fell through. 

When I was a little kid I was so immersed in my hobbies that it’s all I could see myself doing as a career. My impromptu singing at my parents became my wish to be a singer/songwriter and my poor horse riding skills and mutton busting adventures were what influenced my dreams of being a cowgirl. In reality horseback riding was actually my older sister’s hobby and being the younger sibling I was always thrown into whatever hobbies she already possessed. Since we were four years apart in age we were close enough to do everything together but far away enough that she was never interested in hanging out with me. 

As time went on we eventually got separated. She went on to highschool and I was stuck to finish off four more grueling years without her. My remaining time at that school blinded me from the bright futures I had dreamt for myself as if someone took the sun and smothered it in charcoal. At that time I had started to attempt to tackle the task of figuring out my identity as a queer individual. Turns out coming out as trans at a private Catholic school is actually a really bad idea like almost getting run over by a bus to go pick up a shiny quarter in the middle of the street. I reached the lowest point in my life during my remaining years at that school. Every day felt like trudging through mud that was thigh high with angry hornets waiting to sting you at any second. One day I reached out for help and was reminded of my new puppy, Oakley, my best friend, and my mother. All things that got me to continue living and move past it all. I broke away from the awful friendship situation I was in and started hanging out with my childhood best friend more. My Mom enrolled me in a new school the year after and I got to have a new start at a school where I would be accepted for who I am. And sooner or later, I started to feel better.

At this new school I tried theater for the first time. I had remembered how badly I wanted to be in a play in fourth grade and finally got the chance to see if it was any fun. While the show itself wasn’t very interesting and I hated the director, I loved acting. So I kept doing it. Four shows in and I thought I would be an actor. A famous one preferably. I still try to pursue theater, jumping at every opportunity like an eager dog waiting to be served his food. I even got to perform in the Lincoln Center alongside Broadway legends like Norm Lewis and Rema Webb! My theater days were not over but even though my Mom wanted to give me her full support on pursuing theater as a career, she still worried about this plan not working out. So I started dreaming up some plan-b’s. Of course every single one related to whatever my big interest was at the time. Criminal psychology when I was really into true crime, civil engineering when architecture piqued my interest, and many many more.

Eventually a family friend had asked me to tutor her daughter. While I never got to actually tutoring the kid it did get me thinking about teaching and how influential my teachers had been on me. Specifically my English teachers. I always thought it was funny when my teachers would talk about their teachers. I guess I never realized that they were students too at some point. It took me until Ms. Deschamps’ sophomore speech for it to actually process that once upon a time my teachers were influenced by their teachers. And so I started dreaming about being an English teacher. Even though I’m not the fastest reader or I scored slightly lower than average on the “Standard English Conventions” part of PSAT than average, it doesn’t stop me. Over the years Mr. Rubado has taught me to love literary analysis and Ms. Deschamps has taught me to revel in classic literature while also finding new wondrous ways to retell the stories that were written hundreds of years ago. To me that’s what an English teacher does. They teach and inspire and help you find new skills you never knew you had.I want to have the same effect they had on me on someone else.

My newest dream is to have an effect on this world. Big or small, famous or obscure, I don’t care. I just want to change something to prove to myself that I can achieve everything I aspire to be. Future friends, future students, future audiences. I aspire to inspire. That, to me, is what it means to be a dreamer.

The average temperature of ocean water in Monterey, California is 53.8°F. 

That’s cold enough to need a wetsuit, but even worse, it requires planning ahead. 

No longer am I able to simply get up from my desk, walk three blocks, and dive in the warm, welcoming ocean.

No longer am I able to simply stand in the wind and small the salt of the sea, simply because I needed a break from my overwhelming life.

Now, if I am to ever feel overcome with stress, I will have to ask my mom, “Can you drive me to the beach this Saturday?”, “Is my wetsuit in the wash?”, and worse of all I will have to wait. 

I’ve never been a patient person, especially if the reward is simply not satisfying.

So when I arrive, planned, and the cold water envelopes my feet, I longingly recall the time when three blocks seemed to stretch endlessly. 

In the thick of the forest, I am the only thing that breathes. 

The swell of trees that surround me mimics the breath of life, but the creaking wood and the desolate echo of silence denies the necessity of warm blood. 

Things lie here that used to breathe, used to buzz with activity and frequent peoples thoughts.

I am the only one who thinks of this place now.

Only me, my breaths, and the trickle of blood down my thigh. The proof I’m living now, haunting this place with my presence.

I like to imagine the others who have been here, staring out the window I just scraped my leg on, scrambling in.

A distant yell draws me out of my thoughts, my sister calling after me.

I sigh, and leave the tower and it’s empty lungs, waiting patiently for my return the next time the husk crosses my mind.

The first thing he notices is the smell. Or more accurately, the lack thereof.

He scoffs and yells up to her, “Oi! It’s good down here, jump down whenever.”

A thud echoes as she jumps down and lands in a crouch, head tilted back as she too sniffs the air. “One would think an old sewer would smell. I’m pleasantly surprised,” She grins, and rises.

“Yeah well Covid took your smell. You don’t even know if it’s bad or not.” He replies.

“Well is it?”

“..No.”

She smirks, “Knew it, this place is too green to smell like anything other than plants.”

He glances around, finally taking in the moss creeping up the walls and the green mush coating sections of the floor. 

The light beaming down from the high sun makes a nice picture, he looks up to where they parked their bikes before jumping into the ditch that housed the end of the old sewer. He has a vague wondering about how they're gonna get back up, it’s at least 10 feet straight up. He shrugs, they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it.

“Mhm.” He hums, still taking in the surprising beauty of their surroundings. Who knew such beauty could be found in a cast off place that used to store waste.

“Glad we found this place, we should bring the others here tomorrow.”

 “Agreed.” He startles at how far away her voice is, glancing up and finding her studying a wall farther down the tunnel.

He jogs up to her, “What ‘cha lookin’ at?”

“Graffiti.” She grins at him, pointing to the rather obscene and strangely detailed drawing on the wall.

“Okay, wow, ew.” He scrunches his nose as she laughs.

“Prude.”  

“...”

“Race you to the end?”

He pretends to think about it, before taking off at a dead sprint, aware she’s not in running shoes.

“Hey!” Her feet thud loudly, echoing as she takes off after him.

“Gabeeee!” 

No answer.

She stops running, easily exhausted. “Guess that’s why you don’t challenge long distance runners to races.”

She squints her eyes, unable to see the end of the tunnel, but thinking to herself she wouldn't be surprised if Gabe had already left it.

She hopes he waits for her at the end.

Bang.

A childlike laugh echoes. 

“Hit the floor!” she screeches, through laughter.

“Oh my god, don’t joke we almost fucking died, man.” her sister huffs, laying spread eagle in the middle of the empty road.

Bang.

They hadn’t almost died, it just seemed that way to at the time. 

They had been exploring the mossy forest, making their way towards what seemed to be an abandoned tower when they saw a cliff.

Never ones to falter, the trio makes their way down the cliff face, one hanging further back, but nevertheless enjoying their antics.

“Hannah! Get your cute butt down here, I see a lake!”

She laughs, “I’m coming hold on.”

The cliff is very steep, they have to walk almost backwards, holding onto anything they can to repel down.

Bang!

“Woah! What was that?” 

“Shit! That scared me.”

“Was that a gun?”

They’d been so focused on the descent they missed the man on the lake, who was hunting ducks with a rifle.

Bang! Bang!

“We need to leave now.” Her sister says, calmly freaking out.

“Yep.” The other girls nod and start to race back up the cliff, totally forging three points of contact in their mad dash.

Bang.

They continued to laugh, hopped up on adrenaline after managing to reach the road.

She still thinks about how by the time the view of the boat cleared, they were halfway down the cliff face. 

My name means work and diligence, but also rivalry.

Isn’t that interesting? Ever since I found out I’ve been weighing what I think it means nearly daily.

My current opinion is that it means I rival myself and my own work effort. According to the Oxford dictionary, to rival can mean two different things, it can mean (1), to be in competition with, and (2), to prove oneself worthy of rivalry.

It can be difficult for me to work and I’m ever in competition with myself, both my own set expectations and my past self.

Sometimes I think to myself, is this my nature because of my name, or do I have this name because of my nature?

She rubs sleep from her eyes and sits up.

A cold nose touches her knee from where he lays splayed out on her bed.

She huffs out a laugh “You take up half this bed and you're a quarter my size, you're lucky you're cute.”

The dog opens his eyes and stares at her before fading back to sleep.

“Hmm, not time to wake up yet?” She yawns and lays back down, “Agreed.”
She knows her alarm will go off eventually, no need to stress. She falls back asleep quickly.

Not twenty minutes later, he decides it's time to wake up.

Getting up and stretching on the bed, he steps on her and easily signals it’s up time before hopping down from the bed.

She still lies in bed, way too tired to wake up.

Before he leaves her room he shakes, the chime of his tags hitting each other and his collar, rings like a symphony of bells.

The tinkling sound has her hopping out of the bed and trudging to her closet to start getting ready.

The sound echoes through the previously sleeping house, followed by soft groans, the click of lights, and heavy footsteps.

The dog, Louis, walks around the upper floor making sure all his people are awake and poking them with a cold nose. He huffs happily before venturing back to the original room and settling into his place on the bed in front of the already open window.

Her alarm goes off and she groans, having hopes for another few minutes, even though she knows it never happens, her dog's internal clock is scarily consistent.

Jack Baker was plastered against his seat as the Felix-5 rocket propelled him upward. He was piloting the first manned Resurrection mission, a mission tasked with fixing one of the orbital satellites that collected data on the fungus. The satellite had gone down four months prior and the Cordis Colony’s space program had scrambled to get a spacecraft functional enough to fix it. The program had hauled out the failed interplanetary Resurrection spacecraft from its forgotten hangar and modified a decommissioned Felix-5 rocket booster to fit it. The spacecraft and rocket had completed two successful unmanned trips out and back into the atmosphere, but because the program had no idea what was broken with the satellite, they had to send someone up.

Jack Baker was one of the brave, elite pilots who had flown missions in and out of the Bartic Isles when one of the islands’ soil samples indicated fungus eradication was possible. Before his involvement with the Bartic Isles, Jack had been the co-pilot for a cargo plane flying between Luden and Cordis until the route was shut down. Even before that, Jack was a lunar expeditionist on the moon, Perx.

Memories of his own past briefly entered Jack’s mind and he almost chuckled at the irony of it all; if he were to complete this mission, the next one would be to Perx. He was the last one off that moon, and he very well might be the first one back almost fifteen years later. Jack snapped back to the present as the craft jerked slightly. He checked the rocket status (everything was fine) and then the course data.

altitude: 40,000 feet

speed relative to ground: 1,134 mph

upward velocity: 1,052 mph

seconds to atmospheric exit: 34

Then he glanced back at the rocket status; one of the lights had turned orange.

“Liquid seal four is showing strain,” Jack’s voice poured into Alissa’s headset.

Alissa Miller was one of two on the ground at mission command, the other being Daniel Fischer. Alissa and Daniel were the only two regular employees at the Cordis Space Program. The program had once been well over 100 strong but after many rough years, more and more engineers, pilots, operators, and scientists had been siphoned away to defend against the fungus. Surprisingly, running a space program with two people wasn’t actually so bad; first of all, the colony government supplied them with as much funding as was needed and secondly, they had all the designs and research they needed from before the shutdown. The trouble was that the colony had technologically regressed five years in the last fourteen in terms of manufacturing, and there were almost no astronauts left. If Jack hadn’t shown up for this mission two months earlier, Alissa might have gone mad.

“Use a reserve chamber to reduce the liquid pressure on the seal's interior side,” Alissa replied back after taking a quick peek at the rocket’s diagram.

“If that doesn’t work, flood the neighboring chambers with suppressant and open the seals,” Daniel added.

Alissa glared at him.

Ensuring Jack couldn’t hear him, Daniel apologized, “Sorry, but it’s better to prepare him just in case.”

Alissa rolled her eyes and looked back at the display.

“Whatever stops this thing from blowing up,” Jack reached for the autopilot panel then he remembered; the autopilot only had control over the rocket's main fuel burn, he had to fix this manually.

“This is what happens when you put a failed sci-fi spaceship and a rocket old enough to have grandchildren together using children’s toy slime, animal hide, and biological weapons,” Jack muttered under his breath. His description of the Resurrection and Felix-5 union was actually rather accurate (aside from the animal hide); Daniel had needed chemicals for the Resurrection’s coolant and instead of manufacturing them, he extracted one chemical from an abandoned supply of toy slime, and the other chemical from an outlawed bio-weapon that had been stowed away in a vault for seventy five years until master rocket refurbisher, Daniel Fischer, had needed its contents.

Jack selected the correct seal and activated it. The light for the reserve chamber indicated it had filled with liquid but seal four’s status was still orange.

“There’s more pressure in the chamber than I thought,” Jack told mission command. Then Jack saw red; every light on the rocket status panel simultaneously went from green to orange to yellow, then red. The rocket had been completely compromised in a split second and Jack had to act fast.

He frantically searched for the maneuver on the autopilot panel: high speed automatic complete detach. Finding it, Jack selected the maneuver and the autopilot began firing the Resurrection’s own engine. The craft’s rockets flared up and its upper steering propulsion blasted at full throttle. The Resurrection quickly broke away, spiraling violently away from the now burning Felix-5. Jack could see the rocket burning out the front window whenever he spun the whole way round. Then the Felix-5 rocket exploded.

Alissa’s heart missed a beat as she watched the explosion in shock. Only when she noticed the dark shape that was the Resurrection, spiraling through the air, did she recover from her state.

“Jack, do you read me?”

Silence.

She turned to her colleague “You need to get to where-ever he lands,” she paused, “or crashes.” Daniel was already putting his riding suit on.

Jack wasted no time after the explosion — unfortunately there was no time. He felt something slam violently into the bottom of the Resurrection just as he was about to initiate the autopilot’s landing mode. The panel was unresponsive and so was the voice control. The autopilot was down; Jack would have to land the craft manually.

He could feel his suit battling against the sweat on his palms, the water elimination system working to keep his hands dry. Jack glanced at the course data again.

altitude: 55,000 feet 

speed relative to ground: 894 mph

upward velocity: 200 mph

seconds to atmospheric exit: N/A

He let up on the main thruster and began to test the steering propulsion. Slowly the uncontrollable spiraling became a slow, steady rotation. Jack glanced out the window; he had too much adrenaline in his system to appreciate the vibrant, sprawling forest below him, or to feel uneasy at the sight of the farmers desperately fighting the fungus fires beyond the forest, or even to be filled with dread by the desolate fungus fields that stretched over the horizon.

Daniel sprinted out of the mission control building and hopped onto his arach-cycle. He turned the bike away from the barely visible, dark spot in the sky and cranked the speed as high as it would go, letting the self-driving handle the bike.

Daniel whizzed through the forest, his riding suit protecting him from the heat sucking ninety five mph winds. The bike continually switched between two wheels and eight legs. Sometimes a leg would push off a tree or all eight would push off the ground in order to clear a gap.

The biker emerged from the woods and continued his insane speed across the fields of grain. Daniel could see that Jack had gotten the craft under control but it was still going too fast and was just beginning to descend.

Jack had extended the Resurrection’s wings (more so to slow down than to ascend) and blasted the thrusters in the opposite direction as much as he could, but a fuel leak had drained the main thruster’s tank and he needed the fuel reserves for steering. He yet again read the course data.

altitude: 47,000 feet

speed relative to ground: 731 mph

upward velocity: -83 mph

seconds to atmospheric exit: error

The Eastern Dunes filled the cockpit’s front window. “At least it’s one of the softer places to crash,” Jack thought to himself. He had gotten low enough that the winds were now affecting the spacecraft; Jack had one hand constantly pressing two buttons corresponding with bottom steering thrusters, and the other hovering over the collection of horizontal steering buttons. At this point his space suit had lost — Jack’s hands were slick with sweat.

The Resurrection was now passing Daniel. The arach-cycle had made it to 140 mph; moving using the wheels only, now that Daniel was riding on sand. The high speeds had long since drained the battery, the engine had begun running on emergency petrol supply.

“Slow down,” Alissa warned over the radio, “If I end up being the only living member of this mission, I’ll never forgive you.”

“He might need help when he lands. I’ve gone way faster on this thing and never crashed,” Daniel dismissed her.

Daniel was holding on for dear life as the bike mechanically swerved between the massive dunes. He watched uncomfortably as the Resurrection glided unstably ever downward. He estimated the location for the crash, roughly ten miles from his position.

“Can—one—me—,” Daniel heard short, broken bursts of language from Jack via his radio.

“Jack, do you read me?” Daniel’s voice fought with the whistling of the wind. “I’m heading for your landing site. You need to make the softest landing you can and then evacuate the craft immediately after,” he directed.

The Resurrection was now barely above the horizon. It looked to Daniel that it wasn’t going much faster than him but it might have simply been the angle. Then the Resurrection licked the top of a massive dune, spraying sand into the air. It slammed into a second one and finally came to a stop on a third before sliding out of Daniel’s view. He wanted to keep the speed but knew braking on the sand at this speed would be a mistake. He let up on the accelerator and the bike began to lose momentum.

Not two minutes later Daniel’s bike came to a stop at the top of a dune. The wheel brakes engaged and the eight legs dug into the soft sand. Daniel peered down onto the crash site; the resurrection was half buried in sand. A pit formed in Daniel’s stomach as he desperately scanned the sand below him. He didn’t see anything… wait no, he did; Jack was coming out from behind the craft. Daniel, without thinking, started sliding down the side of the dune.

Jack removed his dented helmet as he limped toward Daniel. The astronaut didn’t seem to be majorly injured.

“Are you ok?” Daniel stopped his slide as he reached Jack.

“Yes, although my ankle probably would disagree,” Jack sat down in the sand.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t know there was a pressure-” he was cut off—

“It’s not your fault, I’m sure you’ll get it next time,” Jack reassured him.

“What do you mean ‘next time’?” Daniel helped Jack up and got under the arm on his lame side.

“We need that satellite operational unless you suspect the fungus is about to surrender. I seem to be the only one around who’s able to go and fix it. I’m not an expert but the Resurrection still seems to be mostly intact and I’m sure you can find another functional rocket,” Jack looked back at the off-white metal mass embedded in the dune.

“You’d be willing to fly another mission?” Daniel asked, surprised.

Jack hesitated for a second then answered “Yeah, one hundred percent, I’d love to fly this thing again,” he gestured at the Resurrection.

“Daniel, is Jack alive?” Alissa questioned through the radio.

“No, I'm dead. The Resurrection should be fine too,” Jack responded.

“Good to hear. I’m going to need a debrief when you get back here.”

“My reward for almost dying,” Jack muttered, motioning for Daniel to help him climb up the dune.

Daniel helped Jack onto the bike, then climbed into the front seat himself. He selected a much more relaxed, quarter speed and the two men headed back the way they came (although now using one vehicle instead of two). A slight smile made its way onto Daniel’s face; everything was fine.

To their south, the fungus fires continued to burn. Black smoke rose from the fields and blotted out the sky, the Moons, and the sunset.

¿Qué si existiera una persona perfecta? Una persona que supiera todo en el mundo y que nunca tuviera incertidumbres ni sintiera tristezas? Parte de mi siempre ha querido ser perfecta como los héroes de mis cuentos de hadas favoritos. Mi subconsciente siempre está averiguando exactamente como pensar, como actuar y que decir para agradarle a mis padres, a mis amigos, a mis maestros y hasta a las personas que ni me caen bien. Lo último que quisiera sería quedarme sola en este mundo. Cada decisión que hago debe de ser meticulosamente medida para crear la reacción química perfecta; un movimiento descuidado y todo explotaría en un instante, destruyendo todo y a todos en su camino.

Lastimar a los que más amo me aterroriza. La niebla en la noche me asusta y hasta pensar en perder a mi peluche favorito me causa angustia. Todo lo desconocido me da miedo. La muerte me mortifica. Cada vez que me doy cuenta de que estoy disfrutando algo en mi vida, me acuerdo de que un día todo se va a terminar. Quisiera entender a dónde se va lo terminado, pero eso es lo único que no puedo averiguar sin morir y pues me da miedo la muerte. A veces pienso, “¿si todo se termina, entonces cuál es el punto en vivir?”

Pero a veces, cuando los murmullos del viento lo deciden, puedo estar en paz. Puedo sonreír y reír y divertirme y amar y disfrutar y oler y probar y respirar. Las aseguranzas de que saber todo es inasible son las luces que desvanecen la oscuridad de los pensamientos que me gritan que nada vale la pena y que todo va a terminar muerto y destruido. Pero para que exista la luz tiene que también existir la oscuridad que me persigue y me recuerda que todo se acaba.

Eagerly, we migrated. Your papa and “mom”—said with pursed lips rather than the loose pronunciation of mama, or now Ma, only sighed over the phone, and they migrated too; I wonder if they ever settled. A blur of agriculture passed us, land worked by hands we never saw. You told me that’s where they had met. I asked you further, “And what else?” You told me you didn’t remember. I hesitate now to retell what you don’t remember. In truth, it’s because I’m forgetting too. I think we’re both embarrassed, as the forgetting becomes our continued migration, to have become nomadic in all their attempts at settlements. 

You also told me not my grandma, but yours, your papa Jesus’ mom had thick, unruly hair, braided to her feet, worn with deep brown skin, and a name too long and too many syllables you did not want to pronounce. That she was Indigenous, but still, you weren’t sure. Your Ma would then cut her hair to tame it, severing the past too far back when it was forgotten earlier than her haircut. Only prompted by the fields where your parents had met and the fields where I attended school, you told me of this elusive woman and how your parents met. Your grandfather would occupy mom’s home, taking whatever she gave and more; I frowned at the thought of a man engrossed in so much of my life. Eventually, you said, he would take himself and his now short-haired wife back to Mexico. Allegedly, I’m sorry for all I’ve put you through, Guadalupe, but I’m not coming back. He did not come back because he died from a heart attack soon after. I thought how fitting for a man to determine the survival of migration. 

You picked me up from school and told me grandma would make enchiladas or tamales, but she hadn’t decided yet. As we drove to her house, next to the El Super, I became increasingly excited because I anticipated she would decide on making my favorite of the two. Swimming practice makes me tired, and the cap gives me a headache, so I always ask halfway through to use the bathroom so I can sit on the toilet for twenty minutes; at least I’m not swimming. You said we would stop by grandma’s house first because it was close to the aquatic center with the park next to it, where needles hid in the bushes, prickling unsuspecting kids in flip flops; I had something to look forward to then since I love grandma and her cooking and feel a stomach-full of animosity towards swimming. 

When grandma eventually finished cooking, she made tamales, while I had expected enchiladas. My goggles filled with water before I ever entered the pool, and my face was soggy the whole way to swimming practice since all I had to look forward to was the shoving of limbs, the water that tasted like iron, and probably pee, too. I was not excited. My stomach growled, reminding me of the tamales I had refused to eat, regretting my stubbornness because all I could taste now was the dryness of my tongue and rubber. 

Afterward, we went back to grandma’s house so I could change. On the dresser was a warm, fragrant plate of enchiladas covered in foil.

I promise I memorized all the prayers, even if you correct me when I say the “Our Father” now. I practiced meticulously, having the ritz cracker placed in my left hand only to be picked up with my dominant hand when they really meant right thumb and index finger. To place the cracker on my tongue with my trembling hands, flushed and sweaty, pretending as though I had known this already since when I should have known this. More erratic in my movements as I tried to be fluid, careful, careful as not to chew on the cracker, allow it to dissolve in my mouth, bow before or after, or maybe both. Thank the priest, maybe, do the sign of the cross, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, forehead, tummy, left chest, right chest. Return back to my pew and stay standing, refusing the wine because I could, but really, I thought it was unsanitary to only wipe the cup between each person. 

So, after memorizing the pages of prayers and practicing the consumption of my ritz cracker, I would perform the same ritual in the actual church rather than in our second-grade classroom. Excited to be included, yet terribly nervous to stumble over my clumsiness as I still do now, I prepared myself all throughout the sermon. Cross your arms over your chest, my religion teacher told me as we uniformly turned to the left in the pews to follow the line toward the altar. I am Christian or Christian Orthodox, I think; I’m not sure which because you just told me we don’t believe in saints. Only Catholics can have the ritz cracker, and I discovered I was not catholic when she told me to approach the altar with my arms crossed over my chest, that rather than receiving the thin bread and community wine, the priest would bless me. Then, I would return to my pew. 

You told me you grew up catholic when I told you about my experience. Every Sunday, papa Jesus would wake you and your seven siblings at six in the morning to attend mass, not church. You admitted that you didn’t enjoy it, describing it as a chore; I agreed because I felt the same way. Now, you claim you’re grateful he made you go, as you now make me go. I just wish they would let me have my ritz cracker. I didn’t know there were so many rules.

I, so easily, am the stocky man who is short but no shorter than dad. A cowboy hat shields my wrinkled forehead, deep incisions made by the sun, and a thick mustache that accounts for the hair no longer on my head, which now shields my upper lip. Vulnerable to my employer and the land that employs my already strained back, I sit with my legs spread, asserting what dominance I can, boots planted next to my daughter, who is half my height now. 

I am the daughter, too, hair thick yet somewhat straight, with bangs covering the top half of my thick eyebrows and deep brown eyes like my father and my mama, like my sister and brother and other sister, like my cousins and cousins and tias and tios. I am waiting for the bus with my father, as he examines his hands. We are outside the only El Super, the one on the east side, where, parallel to the bus stop, stretches a valley of fields. Cars pass quickly in the dry, buzzing heat, as we continue to wait for the bus.

I am still the daughter, sitting in a spreckles classroom, confident in my speech and ability because where I had been the least capable in a room of private kids, I was the most here. You couldn’t continue paying for the demanding tuition of the sea school, so you put me in a school that was even deeper in the fields; once, the fertilizer could only find you outside in the playground, yet still, the smell was tolerable. Now, it was suffocating to think I had migrated right back here, from the home to the apartment, from spelling tests to playing hangman for math class.

The house you prayed for, screaming amen in the car and rattling me awake with your aggressive tone, shaking me, expecting your call to have a response; from the man you were praying to, yes, but more from me. You wanted me to pray, too, to be a part of the asking. The house you eventually got, the neighbor’s dogs chasing us into our garage. He continued to loom at the door, kept by his service to patients and the floor. Dad driving up a hill with me in the passenger seat and then rolling down the hill, his hands off the wheel, his knees tight to his chest, and his feet on the seat, laughing in an echo of my own laughter. You wouldn’t remember this either because he probably never told you. 

The house you encouraged him to leave, seeking as far north or as far from the east as you could, and then the house he cried over. Because under the wood floors he installed himself, the railings he fixed, and the backyard he curated, he marked with “me and baba.” He was a construction worker in the islands, did you know that? He told me that once, as he drew one of his elaborate blueprints, he approached all problems with a floor plan and found solutions by acting as an architect. Now, he tells people he is good with needles.

I bunch the tights in the same manner I’ve done for over a decade, my stubby fingers poking through glossy and rigid fabric. The holes at the bottom where the arches of my feet rest are markers for my years of dedication to the craft, making it a living nightmare to fit my cracked-acrylic painted toes through.

Livid, I pull the tights over my spasming calves, the muscles feeling abnormally dense.

As I inch the clothes over my thighs, my skin spills out, pooling with bright blue veins bursting. The veins crawl from my achilles to my groin, wrapping their long, shadowy fingers around my legs in an unbreakable grip. I quickly shove the layers of skin into the unforgivable fabric, not wanting to look at the mesh I’ve covered myself in. 

Soon, the gash will begin. It will stretch across my waist, staining my skin a deep red and sometimes purple color. The gash will lie where my hip is supposed to dip and my back is meant to curve.  Whenever I bend or stretch, I will feel the gash grow and breathe; a living parasite wrapped around my abdomen.

Once the tights are secured, I put on the leotard. The cloth, much more tender and kindhearted, slips on with ease. But once it envelops my chest, I tuck my hands in my armpits, smearing deodorant as I cower in front of the mirror. A bra’s straps would give men unfavorable thoughts. Tape would do well to cover, but not secure. It was a lost cause and a closed case. 

The shorts go on next. I used to wear wrap-around skirts. Then nothing. Then shorts.

My gaze gravitates to the corner of the mirror. I do my hair. My hair, my only favorable feature, is forced into a firm and formidable up-do. My sweat-soaked face swells and shifts until it settles. My shoes are last, but I cannot convince myself to grab the pale split-sole pair.

They slip on, snap, recoil, crease, writhe into place. In an instant, they are melded into my skin. They evanesce, and when I look in the mirror, they are no longer there. 

I’ll dance like they are red shoes. I’ll break and crumble into a million pieces that no one will care to assemble. And when my heart burns with desire as I stare sinisterly at the barre, my resin-coated tights will rub against silky wood. I’ll stick the splits and not split my tights, and I’ll see the slanted stares of the skinny twits and wonder to myself why I could never be their equal.