I glued two devil horns onto my car. Now they have a visitor—a ladybug, gripping the repulsive red foam with just enough indifference that it may as well be a mirror. Red joined by specks of black. $12 adhesive. They could fall off at any time. So could she. Then who will keep me company?
Tick. Tick. Tick. My gas bill rises as she as she reaches the tip. She hesitates, as if to acknowledge me, each step more deliberate, no matter how small. Is the red a reason to run or explore? Is the black empty or temping her for more?The horns stir her little wings enough to catch my attention, but not enough for lift off.
$56 later. My gas clip shudders to a close. She has not yet made up her mind. Will she leave the horns behind or come along for the ride? The choice is not hers to make. She took just enough adhesive to steal what was once mine. The dark will leave just like her—in due time.
At the park, holding a book, scribbling down thoughts I pray the page is worthy of, hoping someone, anyone, cares enough to read, or at least I care enough to remember.
I peer from porous handwriting to a plethora of people so forgettable they could be Sims’ characters. The roller-skater chick in a too revealing sundress lets it sway with every stride for “self-confidence,” not for any man to see, especially not me, because she’s skating for nothing less than vanity, and the thirsty dog that’s chasing her, striving to catch a sniff of sweat or love, which is all the same to me, and the rapper ear-raping her AirPods with an explicit track that’s offensive to everyone, especially his mother, and the noose around dog’s neck that I’d love to share, don’t notice the stranger, head, toes, and eyes, shrouded in black, like shit cooking in the sun, dying a slow death in the unbearable heat on a bench near no one.
Not having sunblock is a cockblock. My face is faded salmon, and I probably look like an expired strawberry — quite the hangover meal. Curse my dad for giving me his pasty complexion, his sullen temperament, his depression, his insomnia, his rage, but not his grey green eyes. No wonder I wear shades. He cursed me with life but not enough will to see it. What does it matter?
Gusts of wind rising from the bay turn my pages into fans and sundresses into lingerie. Sometimes, I’m a fan of the wind. Sometimes. My hair is curly in all the right places, messy at all the right times, so even a blowjob from Katrina won’t make a difference. I couldn’t be any messier if I tried. But I can’t say that about everyone.
I know a girl who fights every breeze like Tom Brady coming out of retirement just to shit on New Orleans (Katrina 2.0). The wind is the one thing she can’t control. She hates it. She yearns for a gust she can latch on too. She prays for a tornado that turns her cow into a steak instead of sending it away. All she wants is something malleable: a kiss she can bite, a hug she can suffocate. Imagine a world with such reign. It doesn’t exist, yet she fights hard to manifest it. She doesn’t hold hands; she imprisons them. She doesn’t run on grass; she kicks the roots under them. She doesn’t drink; she drowns… just like me. That’s why it’s so much more special when she lets me in. She lets me drive, she lets me order, she grants me the power to decide — something all women have inside. For once, she doesn’t oppose the wind; she embraces it. She replaces all her worries with fears I’ve instilled. She gives up her power for the belief that I won’t kill. That’s all that matters. She always has a choice, but I want her to pretend she doesn’t. Women have all the power, it’s up to them to give us what we’re after.
Here comes another lap from the roller-skater, sundress still intact. She must be a professional by now. The dog is long gone, probably finding a new toy to catch or a better ass to sniff. Isn’t that all of us? Never satiated until life catches up and bites us in the ass. Unfortunately for me and my sundrenched cheeks, but fortunately for her sundrenched ass cheeks, she did catch the attention of another type of dog. Refs, as I’d call them in 2016, trace her scent. I haven’t seen this breed since the second-floor high school hallway that permanently reeked of chewing tobacco and sardines (don’t ask). They’re loud, brash, and whistling with an accent that turns “Walmart” into “Gualmar”. Their skintight jeans are far below what’s safe for work, showing more entryway than an airport. Why wear a belt if it’s just going to weigh them down? Maybe they just like to sniff each other for a true whiff of friendship. After all, they wouldn’t leave the door open if they didn’t expect any visitors.
Can I blame them? We’re all the same, just hoping someone enters us in different ways. Me, my heart; them, their vape. What is love if not someone who’s willing to let you blow smoke in their face. I’m writing as if it’s for myself, yet all I want is to have someone cover the page with a vaped cloud of passionfruit or whatever-the-fuck causes my words to erase. I’m speaking, or writing, in hopes that someone will listen, or at the very least get hooked on the nicotine that I’m giving. Like all the refs from here to Cuba chewing tobacco on the mound just to remind themselves of home, it seems that the only time anyone is okay with the world pushing them out of place is when for at least one moment, one hour, one mouthful, one lick, one bite, and one date, they also get to control what they taste.
The shells I picked out of the sand as the sunlight licked my skin in a different tongue are now gathering dust, on the top shelf of my dresser, above rows and rows of worn out boots, unused sneakers, sandals longing for socks, repulsive crocs, all of which are gathering dust, because the one pair I always wear is still by the door, strewn about, the sole separating from the shoe, having sacrificed itself for the pleasures of the day, and tracked sand all along the house, and protected me from the tiny grains that are still big enough to inconvenience me, is begging to be cleaned, wiped, and forgotten, rather than remind me of what they have taken from me, a beach under the sun, a place I’m still running from, the only proof that I have lived at all.
I’m greeted by 11 floors of spirals, turning my head endlessly, parking spots kissing the ass of the car in front of me. I ask how you’re doing. “Fine.” You ask how I’m doing. Here comes the wine.
“Did you get home safe?” How could I?I just left it. I tried to hold on for longer, to the home you provided me. My fingers squeezed tightly. A moment to an eternity. But I’m still at arm’s length. Until we meet again.
My hand treats you like a stranger. My word speaks like a friend. My mind thinks like a lover. All amiss to hesitation.
My watch is watching me waste my time. I don’t look at it enough. The glass is scuffed up but sits on a beautiful silver and black submarine. I can dive to ocean floor, ears bleeding, and it would still be ticking away. Another second floats away; another bubble floats to shore.
I see it’s relentlessly ahead—thirty minutes into the future. As it chugs along, never stopping for even a moment, I’m reminded of the time I just gained with this glimpse. Then I wind the handle and set it straight. My alacrity subsides as I sync it to real time. It keeps going, slowly getting ahead again. I’d have to break it for time to stop. But it won’t.
I’m not peaking at the present. I’m watching it vanish with every tick. The pendulum swings back and forth, to and fro, like my lack of balance, one toe in the future, another in the past. The watch is on my wrist, not my hand; I don’t have a grip on the present. I suffer in a timeline that I will never reach.
I’m not a hot mess; I’m cold and neat. Like a breeze over the bay, quieting humidity. Or a spot in the shade where the sun doesn’t reach. Or a kiss on the neck, because the lips are too sweet.
Am I in the wrong city? The ground doesn’t hug me as I drag my feet. I stomp. It screams, like Latinas shaking ass half past three, as if Eve plucked mimosas off the tree.
But you wouldn’t recognize me without the heat. The ice wouldn’t melt without Miami. No wonder it’s tempting to sink my teeth into another hot mess that’s no good for me.
I tend to snuff the light out of the day before it begins, whereas she is stalked by it.
The light follows her like the shadow it creates.
Heat transfers to cold so I’d imagine she powers the sun.
I need shades for both.
Or we could lower the exposure on life.
Let life be an eternal sunset, a picture-perfect half hour that needs no filter – the happiest of hours.
I pick up a half-off drink and I too lose my filter for the night.
The dark lulls me into believing I can’t be seen.
But I’m pale.
Vampires stand out.
My clothes, the color of ash so if I smoke or spill no one can tell me otherwise, don’t cover my mind, spilling all over the place, no matter how dark it is.
The sight of me is replaced with the sound.
When one sense goes, another takes its place.
When one door closes another one opens… it’s probably to a bar.
He pushed a vase off the counter at 3am while I was fooling around my parent’s living room. The $10 roses spread out on the floor. As did my date. An anemic Colombian with a similar cat-like disdain for rules was no longer lying beside me. She was fetching her clothes in the dark. While I was cutting myself on the broken glass.
It brought me back to the day we met. We were comfortably uncomfortable in the backseat of my first car. My glasses couldn’t handle the supernatural passion of our after school hugs. They were torn in two. I never did see how bad she was for me. Though she never broke my heart. She broke a bunch of my shit. And my cat was smarter than me to see.
The lights flickered on in every room. I hurried her to my car and kissed her before slamming the door on her ass. She didn’t fight me, for once. That’s how I knew it was over. She didn’t break the silence. I promised myself that the next time I’d see her, it would be in the daylight. That day never came. Neither did I.
