Fiction

This is the last time I’ll ever come here.

I remember the first time I saw them, and I think I almost passed out.

Like a quarter thrown into a fountain for good luck, the full moon shone bright against the fog-and-cloud marbled October sky.

When I left in June, the last item I tucked away in the car was a tomato seedling--one of the near hundred that had sprung out of the earth unprompted during the weeks before. We hadn’t sown new seeds, yet they sprouted, ready to try again after last year’s failed harvest.

Squatting in the soil with my 13-year-old, we plucked them from the old plant bed, taking caution to not tear the roots that would anchor them where they now belonged in the garden.

This is the origin of June and how she became a villain no one could stop.

Eight Hour Orphans

The mothers start their days at 6:45am. They swing their legs over the side of the bed, they stand and sway into the bathroom and look at themselves in tile-reflected fluorescent light. “Am I turning into my mother?” they ask their reflections. “Yup,” their reflections reply.

Zenaida opened his eyes on a couch to a crowd of voices surrounding him. He could see no people. He saw a small round table decorated in a dinosaur party theme with what had been a large T-rex ice sculpture. It looked like it had a broken neck bent backwards and the arms were nearly completely missing. He glanced at the puddle underneath.           

“We apologize for the ice sculpture. We hadn’t anticipated how long you would be unconscious,” a voice spoke from in front of him. He wanted to speak, but his entire jaw ached.

The package was heavier than she expected. She ripped the flimsy duct tape from the seams of the box and pulled out what was inside: a book. Paperback, pages tattered, worn from overuse. The corners of her lips mirrored the curled page corners as she started to smile and hugged the book close to her body. It had been a month since she subscribed, but she wasn’t upset by how long it had taken. All that mattered was it was finally here.

At eight o’clock in the morning, Megna’s phone alarm chimed on her bedside table. She reached over, swiped her finger across the screen and checked the notifications on her phone. Megna, Allah bless u… I will be there in two hours. Remember to do ur prayers. Replying with an ok, ma, Megna tossed her phone back on the bedside table and reclined backwards. She hadn’t prayed since her mother sent her to a Sunday Islamic school when she was a teenager, but her mother liked to believe otherwise.

I am afraid of the dark. When I was young, I didn’t like to sleep because I feared those tiny little colorful beads we see when we turn off the lights. I couldn’t tell them where to go, what to make. They moved on their own accord, dancing to their own mechanisms. They could be beautiful. They made circles or spirals or zigzags, like a display of synchronized swimmers. I remember napping with my mother and telling her that they looked like colorful grains of sugar swirling through the air. Though, more often than not they didn’t dance so gracefully.