New Forum I Short Story Issue 2019

NEW FORUM
THE SHORT STORY ISSUE
2018-2019

New Forum
UCI Undergraduate Creative Writing Journal
2018-2019
http://sites.uci.edu/newforum/
newforum@uci.edu
Editor in Chief
Misha Ponnuraju
Design Editors
Erika Higbee
Sarah Mayo
Social Media Editors
Audrey Fong
Julianne Vu
Events Editor
Analisa Gomez
Jocelle Valera
Financial Editor
Adam Timms
Special Thanks
Susan Davis, the Creative Writing Emphasis, the Department of
English and Comparative Literature, Alternative Media, and Justin
Standard
Front Cover Art: “What Goes Up (Must Come Down)” by Crystal
Ly
*This publication does not represent the views and/or opinions of
the University of California, Irvine; the University of California, the
Regents of University of California, and/or its affiliates.

contents
“Mr. Wolf I Am Waiting For the Moon to Meet the Sun” by Jasmine
Huerta Lara
“Mi luz que nunca se fundió: La historia de una gorda” by Daisy
Mabel Murguia
“Sign of the Cross (Shesus)” by Cheyenne Read
“El Mozote” by Julyssa Sandoval
“Of That Perhaps” by R.M. Corbin
“Polaroids Without Purpose” by Gabriella Salinardo
“El Hierofante” by Meliza Gutierrez
“Be Aware” by Cameron Marsden
“SOAR” by Franky WenFeng Zhang
“Homeless Arrival” by Woojin Song
“The Sky’s Flesh” by Sierra Myer

Mr. Wolf I Am Waiting for the Moon to
Meet the Sun
I
His name is Mr. Wolf and he’s been around since the worst half of last
year. His eyes are dead and he hasn’t slept in days, so naturally, you ask
“When was your last meal?”
He laughs so hard he almost spits on you because you tried to care
about him. He’s been drinking Gin, and you know because he’s crying. He wipes
his face with his handkerchief, carefully thumbs the gold french pocket watch
in his left hand, and reaches for his long filet knife to cut the legs of a rabbit that
has been steaming and boiling in a small blue pot. Your eyes notice a scatter of
Sunflowers were painted on the pot by a small curious hand. The wrist wrote
on the pot “wolfie.” You’ve already seen too much about this man and feel invasive.
“The days are becoming much shorter and the stars are out longer, aren’t
you excited?” He knew your discomfort. “Alpha Centauri is our closest star. I
think I see him all the time.” The way you avoided him searing into the rabbit
flesh with such clean hands and would rather look at what a missing child gifted
him, it said a lot about you. You always say too much.
“Who do you see?”
“Alpha Centauri.”
The wood burner crackled behind you, blowing it’s heat in the back of your neck,
your clothes feel heavy. He stops cooking and looks at you falling apart ready to
sob.
“Why did you come here?”
“The butterflies are cold in your stomach, you have to let them out,”
your voice slurred, you press your hand to your face so you won’t spin out the
room.
“Stars talk to me though, and if you just listen, they can talk to you too.”
“What do they say?” He is reaching for a thick wool blanket.
“Well I can’t tell you Mr. wolf, you just have to listen for yourself...” before
your eyes shut.
II
by Jasmine Heurta Lara
Mr. Wolf I kissed a boy once. I was really bored, and he was really
stoned. We were a match made in heaven, I like to brag. He had these long fingers
that would glide over my legs when we’d tell each other secrets. How many
secrets do you have?
I’ll tell you one right now, his lips reminded me of my brother’s. When
we kissed, I threw up on him. We pass by the halls sometimes at school, and he

never looks at me. I try really hard not to smile or laugh. I never liked his attitude.
My brother committed suicide, you already knew that, but I hate admitting
it. When I say it out loud, I get this bitter aftertaste of a life I live without him. I
don’t know if I can still remember everything. I know I still have him with me..
but I am too scared to try to remember, because what if I can’t? His photos aren’t
familiar to me anymore, who is that sweet brother I have missed all my life it
feels? I am terrified of making shit up in my head and thinking it’s real. You and I
have both have yet to smile.
III
She woke up bundled in the wool blanket on the floor, her eyes catching
up to clear the blur of the room. It smelled rich with yellow spices and herbs, as
if a wonderful family ate and laughed together until their bellies were full. She
looked for any signs of shoes against the wall and a jolly round mother to tuck
everyone in.
She was alone and her heart hurt. Her breath was hard to swallow and
she scrambled to go outside the cottage for some air. Outside the cottage was in
a tall forest and a river nearby, unexpectedly it was twilight and many animals
were returning to sleep. She’s been here before but never awake. Oh but where am
I? Where there are so many butterflies they could begin to eat me. She chewed
her fingertips. She didn’t want to think about so many things. Her feet began to
take her and she was running through the light escaping the earth. Her feet and
legs being whipped by branches and sharp vegetation. She heard the wind whisk
frantically against her as if telling her to go the other way, but she kept seeing
her brother in her mind right next to the sunflower field. She kept seeing him in
families and rabbits and in little blue pots.
The poor girl was the one to find him in his room with eyes like God,
and a mouth so
close to a newborn’s. His brains like the mushrooms she keeps stepping on.
She screamed and her foot caught in a rock. Her body thrusted and
tumbled against the harshness of wet dirt and leaves. She arched against a tree,
holding on with all her might, with her legs and dandelion feet bleeding.
“I stopped thinking?” She whispered almost triumphantly.
“There you are! You can’t take off so suddenly! It’s dangerous!” Mr. wolf
scolded her and threw the red quilted blanket over her. “Look at you... you’re
bleeding. Why would you do his?” He wiped the blood from her legs away with
the blanket.
“I saw him again!” Her voice tore through her throat.
His face turned softer and he picked her up to take her back.
“Look at you.” He repeated. “You’re awake here now. It’s different. You’re
not going to return whenever you’d like.”
“Mr. Wolf I’m sorry, I am waiting for the moon to meet the sun, and I

don’t want to miss it. If I believed in a God, I would crucify myself for you.”
“You’re a damn handful. I’ve never heard this poem before how about
you tell me more when we get you back inside.”
Jasmine Lara is currently an undergraduate transfer student studying English
with an emphasis in creative writing at the University of California, Irvine. In
April 2017, she was awarded the “Grossmont
College English Department’s First Place for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction”.
In 2018, she transferred from Grossmont college as a James Rodey Young Creative
Writers Scholar.

Mi luz que nunca se fundió: La historia de
una gorda
by Daisy Mabel Murguia
As a toddler, my mother says I would strut around, modeling my clothes, and
never wore less than two outfits a day; my clothes were always impeccable,
never a spot in sight. They were color coordinated, sparkly, different shades of
pastels, and polka dotted. I was confident, funny, and talkative as can be, at only
two and three years old.
I had almost no hair, and my mother took me to get my first “haircut”. When
my three year old face looked in the mirror after the cut, I exclaimed, “Me veo
guapísima,” as I patted my few locks of dark brown hair.
The innocence of those years, my childlike joy, and my utter lack of malice,
allowed me the biggest spurts of selflove, confidence, and sense of security that I
have yet to feel again. Times were simpler then, as they always seem to be.
***
“Estás embarazada,” my uncle Trino’s wife, Senaida, smirked at me while she
touched my protruding tummy. I was only 9 years old then, a chunky child, and
I remember it took me a few seconds to register what she’d said and how she
meant it.
I remember crying, telling every adult that was in my aunt Juanita’s house that
day, and they all threw dirty looks at Senaida. Even as young as I was, I would
not be quiet. But even as young as I was, I had begun to realize skinny and beautiful
were synonyms and I didn’t fit the mold. Yo era gorda.
***
My family’s obsession with thinness, because of how small my mother and her
eleven siblings were back in Mexico, is a shared obsession among family friends,
acquaintances, and just about everyone I know. It’s a universal obsession.
My mom and her siblings had been so skinny: what’d happened to them? I’d
hear comments of the sort from family friends or extended family who had
preserved their “skinny” like a shiny prize. All my aunts and uncles had to eat
then was frijoles, tortillas, and milk every day; fruits and vegetables were too expensive
and meat was only for special celebrations. They’d walk four miles every
day just to get to school, so, of course they had been skinny.
I can’t blame them for taking up so much more space now, because in the

United States, it’s easy to eat in excesses and the cities we’ve lived in are fast food
gold mines. It puts my fatness into perspective. I have the privilege of being fat,
while my mom recalls eating wet dirt while she washed clothes in el río with her
siblings.
***
“Hey, fatass,” retorted the short, chunky Mexican guy nicknamed “Chumchum”.
This had not been the first time he had walked directly into our 8th grade science
classroom in Rialto Middle School and teased me. It had become a daily occurrence,
and I remember always looking to my friends, hoping they’d defend me,
say something , but they never did.
Rialto Middle School, the new campus, had opened the year I began sixth grade.
The walls were clean, the concrete was light grey, and yet the students had food
fights almost every day. There were also physical altercations at least once a week,
the type that always ended up on YouTube. The city of Rialto, which have been
my stomping grounds since the middle of my fifth grade year, is 72.8% Latino/
Hispanic. I both simultaneously grew up with people who spoke like me and
thought like me, and at times, even looked like me, except I took up more space
than most girls in my classroom. I was an easy target for Chumchum.
On this particular day though, my teacher, Mrs. Chovan, a nice lady with a
blonde mullet and NASCAR fascination, finally heard Chumchum’s comment.
“Excuse me?” she said from across the room.
Chumchum, who was known to never hold back, simply turned to face her and
said, “Shut up bitch.”
The next two days were glorious, he was suspended, and I was able to walk into
class with a pep in my step.
Chumchum was one of the many painfully awkward memories that tie me back
to my short, chunky self, with permanently rosy cheeks, and a downward gaze.
At that point, all the traces of confidence and assurance I had once held as a
toddler were far gone. Insecurity was the norm and throughout these years, the
universe would make sure to humble me, put me in my place, and tell me I was
not enough, because I was too much.
***
My aunt Juanita, my cousin Jasmine, and I went to pick up my cousins, Andrea
and Carlos. My aunt Juanita and Jasmine were from my mother’s side, we were
all so close. Andrea and Carlos, however, lived in Chicago, I had never met them,
and they were from my father’s side, making them perfectly familiar strangers.

We hopped off my aunts car and walked to the terminal in the bustling LAX airport
to pick them up. My cousin Andrea was my brother’s age, around eight years
old, and Carlos was my age, around ten years old. Before I was even able to say
hello, my cousin Andrea looked me up and down, at my leopard print dress with
aqua blue belt, and exclaimed, “Wow, you’re so fat!” I don’t remember anything
much about what I said, or what she said, after. I never wore a dress
casually or willingly again.
We hold on to that moment of embarrassment and shame, and we highlight it,
store it in our brains to remember for later when we want to drown in our own
self pity. I do remember the rest of my cousin’s trip, we had the best time, we did it
all . We went to Disneyland, Universal Studios, the movies, the beach; every fun
activity that young kids love.
A few years later would pass, when, during finals week of my senior year in high
school, my mother received an unsettling phone call. My brother and I had just
sat in the car after school and our mother’s facial expression didn’t sit right with
us.
My mother told us Andrea had died of “kidney failure”. We later found out,
through mutual family friends, that she had committed suicide, taken a bunch of
pills, and that her kidneys had failed, but because she’d overdosed.
My first and only memories with my cousin Andrea was that trip, so many years
ago. She had always been outspoken, with no filter, and I hope that wherever she
is, she is no longer suffering. For so long, I thought I didn’t care, I thought that
I was heartless, but it’s hard to mourn the death of someone you only met once,
but someone with such a close familial connection.
I had never been on a date before, at my 18 years of age, the opportunity had
never presented itself, until the day I received a direct message on Instagram
from a boy I faintly remember from high school.
***
The days leading up to the infamous date, I facetimed this boy, named Isaiah,
every night for a week. Perhaps a red flag should’ve been when he mentioned,
nonchalantly, that he received packages for his brother, who was in jail, and that
the FBI might catch him someday soon. I didn’t know then, what I know now,
that he had been like a lot of boys in Rialto High School, who started doing drugs
since middle school, and had never really stopped. My high school was mostly
Latino/Hispanic students, and it was common to hear some of us speaking
Spanish at any given time, and yet I remember this boy did not know more than
an “hola” in Spanish.

The day of the date, I shared my location with my friends and cousins, because
even at all of our young ages, we knew dates, especially from social media, could
lead to potentially harmful and even fatal situations.
He picked me up from my house, that stood on the corner of Willow and Montrose,
in an old, rickety car, the type that was nearing its last days. As soon as I
got in the car, he bombarded me with comments like “You are so beautiful,” the
type that isn’t necessary to do every five minutes because it begins to feel forced
and disingenuous.
He drove the old nave all the way from Rialto to the movie theatre that sits right
next to UCR. We wanted to watch “Get Out”, but we had come too early, so we
ate at Jersey Mike’s Subs, and I distinctly remember his sandwich had onions and
that he had braces because he excused himself to the restroom to clean them. I
was so nervous I scarcely ate my beefy sandwich.
Eventually, we found ourselves back in the lobby of the movie theatre, still waiting
for our movie. I stood there next to him, as we looked at the shiny machines
and games, and then he was leaning in for a kiss. I remember my face wrinkling
up in confusion, and standing there, immobile. The movie theatre lobby was
packed, and here I was, green pants and khaki jacket, kissing a boy I had only
met less than an hour before.
During the movie, it only worsened, because during the full hour and forty four
minutes of “Get Out” he began yelling at the screen, obscenities, n words (he was
Mexican), in a movie theatre where half the population was African American. It
was then that I knew he was off his rocker and that he wasn’t okay.
At that point, I didn’t think the date could get any worse, until, I saw his hand
reach over, and then stop on my belly. His hand lay there while he said, “I love
girls with a bit of a potbelly.”
I instinctively swatted his hand away, but remember thinking how fucking weird
he was. Who says that to someone they had barely met? He even went on to say
that he could help me with my diet, and exercise, and I knew then there would be
no second date.
A connection I had not made at that time, was that he had touched my stomach,
the way Senaida had, as a way to make me feel bad, as a way of saying: in case
you’ve somehow forgotten, you’re fat. I think it made them feel powerful, humbling
the fat girl, wouldn’t want her to think she’s better than us.
***
Un mantra para las gorditas

My body thanks me everyday
Ella es fuerte, viva, y resistente
She is fat
She is beautiful
I don’t hate her anymore,
I only passively dislike her,
but have learned to live inside of her
My body says it’s alright to feel
Me dice que es bueno llorar
Dejar que mis lágrimas fluían
Que se conviertan en un río
Y que las deje ir
She says that it’s okay to feel bad about myself sometimes
My body says: remember when you were only three?
You strutted and danced and loved yourself
¿Por qué no intentas ser ella otra vez?
She’s in there somewhere,
underneath it all,
she’s waiting for you
Aunque no lo creas, lo mereces todo
Nunca lo olvides
Eres suficiente
Nunca lo olvides
Eres bella , nunca lo olvides
***
I was only “skinny” for a few months when I was 15 years old, but I hated myself
more than I ever had, more than I ever did. And once I stopped being skinny,
I realized it hadn’t made me any happier. I had been so insecure, so unsure of
myself, and yet I had that “skinny” ideal that I had always wanted, that I had
always thought I needed to be happy. The diet pills, exercise, juice cleanses, and
colonic hydrotherapy; none of that was going to internally transform me, none of
that was going to make me love me . It took me so long to realize that, and once
I did, it became easier to be kinder to myself, to care for myself, regardless of the
extra pounds. Despite what people have told me my whole life; that I was fat, that
I needed to lose weight, none of that ever managed to dim my light. Still, it’s an
everyday struggle, I won’t just magically wake up one day and be the same three
year old who strutted her outfits in the living room, but I’m on my way there. I

know now that what I want is not to be skinny, or to lose weight, but rather to be
happy with the person I am, and the person I am beco ing; this body is only my
vehicle to getting there.
Daisy Murguia is a third year Literary Journalism and Spanish double-major.
She’s currently a content writer for InSight Magazine and a contributing writer
for the New U. She previously worked for UCI’s Strategic Communications office
as a student writer. She jokes about opening up her own coffee shop one day.

Cheyenne Read

El Mozote
by Julyssa Sandoval
I was eleven when my father hung himself. I often thought it had been punishment from
God. God, I had learned, had no room for people like me. Or maybe it was my father who
had no room for a faggot. My father was an ingrown Catholic, and he often believed he
was doing the work of God when he spoke to me about my queerness. But was it God who
wanted to punish me? Or was it God who wanted to punish my father? Irony, I learned
later on played a role in all of this questioning, and ultimately it was my father who punished
himself, not God. Punishment for who he made suffer, for the mozote hanging on
our clothes when we were kids. Before sexuality, before maturing, before realizing that the
screaming never went away.
“I don’t understand you. I didn’t raise you to be a faggot. Dios te va mandar al
infierno”
“You didn’t raise me at all.”
My father did not intend to be a bad man perhaps. He believed in the goodness of people,
but while he fought for the freedom of his people during the Salvadoran Civil War, he
could not fight for his own freedom, away from the alcohol abuse and drugs that would
follow after, for the sake of his family. I don’t believe the war ever left him, I think it stayed
with him in the later half of his life. The intergenerational trauma, after all, stayed with the
people who loved him. It never went away and “Father” was a word so alien to me, that
often I wondered what the role of one was. I believe that my mother also had confusion
of these terms, like the way she confused “husband” and “abuser” more often than the
amount of cigarette burns she gained overnight when my dad came home.
I once sat down, drinking the coffee (too young as I was), with my
mom. She was younger then, with less wrinkles and less life in her gaze. Somehow
as she grew older it seemed like she became younger, like the life that had
been so brutally taken from her was now reassembled by her own hand.
“Why him?” she smiled a little, her hands were swollen from the new
traces my father had left her. I could not tear my gaze from her wrists, blistered
and purple, thin from her inability to eat because of all of her crying.
“He’s gentle when he forgets.”
“Forgets what?”
“El Salvador.”
History books don’t tell you about the wars the United States creates.
After all, the winners always get to tell the story. For all the reasons my father
held a deep love for his country. And for as much as my father loved his country,
I hated mine for keeping me ignorant of the details of my people’s story.
My father was young when war broke out in Salvador. The U.S involvement
led my father to join the FMLN, he’d been a campesino then, helping my
grandfather who had been a single parent. He loved his people, he wanted to
protect his land. But he could not protect himself from the emotional scarring he
caused himself and his children after it. He could not understand in the later half

of his life, why he couldn’t stop hearing the screaming and crying even after the
war had ended. Was it the cries of the children who were massacred by the
government? Or was it his own screaming, lost in between insults and jeers of
torture toward my mother and those he saved for when he cried by himself.
The Salvadoran Civil lived in my father, in the same way that trauma
and intergenerational pain lived in the many crevices of broken bones and open
cuts, fresh, from my suffering. The war began in 1980 and ended in 1992 officially,
but to my father, it never did fully end. God, the one he worshipped the
way a dog worships its master, graced him with memories so vivid he couldn’t
distinguish if it was the Salvadoran military, or his child that he was beating. I
was five once when I jumped into a bush and came out with mozote in my hair.
I had finally convinced my mom to take me to the park while my father wasn’t
home, but she regretted it I’m sure, when she realized what I had done. My mother
spent the next hour trying to pull every last piece out of my hair through my
sobs. Even now I’m not really sure if it was the mozote that hurt or my father’s
hand that left bruises over mother’s back when he returned. When I asked my
mother why my father was so upset about my hair, she smiled and shook her
head, but she couldn’t hide the tears on her face even when she claimed it was
sweat. “He thinks about it a lot. Tu tia. She had long hair like you. I’ve seen pictures.
She looked like you. I think it’s time we cut your hair.”
Perhaps she wanted to forget about mozote.
Mozote. In English it means bur, but in Salvador and to my father, it
meant trauma. Sonsonate is very far from El Mozote, but my father traveled all
the time, to see his family and friends there, he liked the feeling of the beach in
Sonsonate, but he loved the feeling of community in Morazán. He never thought
that he’d see El Mozote’s community destroyed by the very people who had
vowed to uphold the peace of El Salvador. He never thought he’d see my aunt,
buried within all the headless bodies of children and women. The Massacre of
El Mozote took away what was left of my father’s youth, it was the push that lead
him to join Salvador’s guerrilla forces. And perhaps pitchforks and machetes
weren’t enough to fight off gunfire, but my father believed that el salvador (God
as we call him), would protect his people. But he always wanted to forget El Mozote,
so we don’t think about cities, we think about burs.
Mozote is so irritating when it sticks to your clothes, or when your dog
comes back from being outside and you have to spend hours plucking each bur
from its fur. Mozote clings to you, like we cling to life. It holds on tight, almost in
the same way that a rope holds on tight to a ceiling fan. Before my father kicked
the chair from under him, I wonder if he thought about the many dreams he’d
had as a boy. “Quiero volar. Quiero ver como se siente vivir en un mundo
fuera de aqui.” He’d always been fascinated by the sky, he wanted to fly, and I
wonder if he ever got the chance to after he let his head fall, he wasn’t looking at
me, he didn’t have to look at his faggot child anymore, he could look down, at the
world that destroyed him, and at the lives he’d destroyed. This was, perhaps, the
greatest success of all.
But perhaps it’s better to forget about mozote now.

My lover’s dog came back one day, limping, it had a bur stuck in its
paw from when it disappeared to explore the backyard. She took the bur out and
rubbed the dog’s paw before throwing the bur away. She looked at me first, show
ing me the dried up bur and smiled, wondering why I cringed at the tiny seed she
showed me. “It happens. Dogs are just dogs, they don’t know what they’re doing,
they just want love and attention. Don’t yell at him,” I was scared for it. My lover
smiled at me and shook her head “Why would I yell?”
“Because my father did.”
El Mozote was love for my father, and when it was taken from him, he
decided to take away love from the people he encountered in his life. My mother
and I, were love, but he took away love from us when he fell back into heavy alcoholism.
Love, I learned, and the many versions of it, had become so contorted
to me, that I would find in my young adult life that I was called incapable of truly
loving the lovers I had, but love, was a fear for me. A fear so far
ingrained that when I was hospitalized for my faggotry (The first time when I
was only ten because I learned too early that little kids shouldn’t be anything but
heterosexuals), I attempted to end my own life before they discharged me. My
father never came to see me, and I- I never asked. I wanted to believe in the love
of a father, but what is the love of a father when all you feel from your father are
cigarette burns and alcohol searing your skin. We could never agree on
love.
But we did agree on one type of love: Our love for women.
“You love women.... Porque? Is it because of how I am?” my father
asked, and I wondered then what he may have associated sexuality with.
“I love women because... it’s freeing to love them... I love them because
to love men is me being forced to acquiesce to your culture... la cultura que manda
a mi sexualidad al infierno. Papa... I love women, not because of what you’ve
done to me, but because it’s who I am. I love men in a very different but equally
romantic way, my sexuality is my own, something intimate
that I love, the same way I’ve loved the many people I’ve loved, not for their gender,
but for themselves.” And for the first time my father smiled, I couldn’t tell if
it was a sad smile or a bitter one, but I doubted that it mattered after I heard him
speak to me once more, with his voice so soft that it was barely human.
“Ah... ya entiendo... I think I feel that way perhaps... with your mother.”
My father and I agreed on our love for women but I also believe that we
agreed on our trauma toward men at the deepest cores of our beings. In the same
way that I hated how men had abused of me all my life, my deteriorating mental
health and physical scars to show it, perhaps my father also hated men. Men,
after all, had taken from my father his childhood, his happiness, his sanity, and I
don’t believe he ever forgave men for that. How do you forgive someone for war,
when that war continues to live inside of you for the remaining years in your life?
A month before my father hung himself, like a mobile on a baby crib
(so soft and gentle to let the baby sleep. Was I the baby?) he was starting his
daily routine of drinking by stopping by the local market down south of where

countryside after all, could feel very isolating. My father came back a while later
with two packs of beer and sat himself down in front of where we lived. He went
through his first can and then
got up, looking inside the house to see if anyone was home. I was.
“Ven aqui.” And I did. I sat down beside my father while he drank, and
I looked at the many stray cats around our part of town. I think they liked the
countryside. Not because it was warm or friendly, but because there were mice
they could leech off of. We didn’t really speak, and my father was more sober
than drunk, after his first can he seemed done with beer for the day, odd as it
seemed to me.
We both sat in silence so deafening, that I couldn’t look at him. My
father and I didn’t speak much, let alone spend time together as family. I looked
up at the sky, seeing the birds flying around, they were fighting, I think, or maybe
dancing, you could never tell with birds, if it fear or love that kept them together.
“I don’t blame you.” My father said, his eyes were glued to the same
birds I had just been watching but my own gaze was torn away to look at him
now.
“Blame me for what?” I asked, my throat tight while I waited for
something. I didn’t know what I waited for, but I’d felt his anger a lot in my life,
and I wondered if my question would infuriate him.
“For wanting to die... I don’t blame you.” It was the last real conversation
I had with my father, and it was the last time I ever saw him act like a father, or
perhaps as just something that wasn’t an abuser to their abused. I smiled at him
for the first time, I don’t remember smiling at him before, in the same way that I
couldn’t ever remember my father ever really being a father to me.
“Thank you.”
When my father hung himself...
And when my father hung himself...
But when my father hung himself...
My father hung himself...
Tonight my lover told me she wanted to hang herself. And I thought
of the stars. Was my father flying right now? I told her I wanted to see the stars
with her. Could we fly? When she fell asleep I looked at her, and I thought of
my father, and I thought of my past lover, the one who hung himself because his
parents believed God never created faggots or Trans folks. I spoke to God for
the first time in years, and asked what I did, to see the people in my life lynched.
And I asked him for the first time, to not take this away while I looked at the soft
expression of my lover.
And for the first time, he listened.

Of That Perhaps
by R.M. Corbin
It takes him two running steps and a leap to get up, off the porch, and
over it all—beneath him, while still in mid-air, the whole field of corn bends in
the wind, bowing to the momentary child who hangs without motion there, the
low sun casting his form into a great stelliform of grey. The world beyond the
field is flat, empty, infinite. Right at the apex of the jump, he can track a stark line
where the nothingness meets the horizon: the liquid ends of two great voids that
stop, complete, in regard for one another. In a flash, it’s gone. Bare feet meet the
velvet of soft dirt, rough entangled knuckles of roots and leaves, and a whole new
thing is suddenly right there, inches away: blades of green and yellow like sharp
fingernails through heavy paint, rose gold tendrils spun and inbent, sunkissed
browns like fist-crumpled paper. He does not stop, but runs right on through
toward the now-invisible line beyond it all.
The girl is up above and behind, the crow’s nest a blot of oblong filled
against a treacly sky of red and blue and orange. The nest’s barrel is raised and
bolted onto a pole that runs up from the house’s roof like a mast— a rope ladder,
serpentine and limp, forms small leaping arcs like radio waves, its loose end
tapping lightly against the mast’s base. She leans way out, bent down the center
against the barrel’s chime, tracking the pulses of movement in the field below.
Her left hand is loose on a small sack of pebbles. She holds a slingshot in her
right.
She yells out to the boy below, a palimpsest of words that comes down
on him with real weight: the familiar thump of something heavy dropped in an
empty room... and she stares down at the field as the solid animal pulse of the
boy’s run cuts sharply to the left in response. There’s another deep pulse from
somewhere inside her, a dribbling dance of something dense against the
skin of a drum pulled tight— an interior echo that reminds her of her shape and
space. There’s no breath up there; no warmth of self but the cold air, whisper-light
in its emptiness, that would roll through her if it could. She raises the slingshot to
eye-level and pulls the band back tight against her cheekbone, thinking that she’s
had dreams with less painted-in color than the sky around her: the fullness that
leaves only enough for her negative space.
The scarecrow, a hatted and headless capital-T of father’s flannel and
denim, is absent. The boy can remember being small, the smallest that he can
recall ever being, laying almost fetal on his side in a bed of flat neon fabrics, and
looking out through a canvas of black to the cornfield, the whole scene painted
grey with lacteal moonlight: the high pile of corn stalks reaching up and into a
dark linen sky: little animal hands, the extended fingers of golden tassels,
gently shooing away something unseen and without name. The scarecrow was
built onto anenormous mast of wood, the same mast that now rises from the
house’s roof, and would cast shadows deep inside the boy, new dark corners

of his interior self, as he’d lay and watch its fabric dance slightly in the high-up
winds above the field. It scared him. It evoked a kind of unassailable little-kid
fear; the kind of fear that the boy still knew now, though only from a careful
distance. He’d begged his mother to take it down, persistent and often spasmodic
pleas of knowing yet not, and though she did not understand, she did care. But,
someone has to scare the crows, she’d said.
The stir is fast to start, and the field belches out a scattering of birds
who split and rejoin, taking no time to catch the wind; little black veneered stars
that call out to each other in kind— drummed complaints birthed in the throat.
The girl whips toward it, taut rubber pinched and brought back at her self, and
releases. A grand half-arc is drawn by the disappearing stone, diving right into
the center of the spiraling black mass; a fractured whole of life and voice and
flight that pulses and writhes, curving and turning away from the house, off
toward the great dividing line beyond— not dropping a single one of its many
parts.
R. M. Corbin is a fiction and essay writer from San Diego, CA. Winner of Best
Fiction in the 2018 issue of the San Diego City Works Literary Journal, as well
as the Howard Babb Memorial Essay prize, you can find samples of his work on
Instagram at @rmcorbin.

El Hierofante
by Meliza Gutierrez
I was never much of a coffee connoisseur, but my tía Camila’s little
Cuban bakery’s coffee was objectively the worst to have ever been brewed in the
entire city. To be fair, La Mama wasn’t known for its awful coffee. It wasn’t really
known for anything to anyone except the regulars that frequented the place, but
to those lucky few, it was known for its decidedly above average pastries which I
dutifully sold for the past 9 months.
Amidst the eclectic restaurants, elaborate dessert shops, and extravagant
coffee joints that had started to pop up around the neighborhood, La Mama was
never as popular as it once was before gentrification started threatening business.
My aunt was always looking for new ways to get more people into the shop. The
latest experiment was a chalkboard on the sidewalk featuring sloppy artwork and
awful puns. The drawing of the day featured a rolling pin and the phrase, ‘Just
roll with it.’
It was the slowest time of the year. I usually had the afternoon shift, but
when the morning guy quit, familial obligation required me to take the dreaded
morning shift. Which was why I dared to experiment with La Mama’s coffee.
The days of sleeping in and wandering the city late at night after closing
in search of inspiration or a story to tell were gone. If nothing else, my battle with
the muddy bean water helped add some variety to my new routine. It took a couple
weeks to figure out how to mask the cheap coffee taste. By then, I was familiar
with all the morning regulars whose New Year’s Resolution didn’t involve killing
our little bakery. But by some divine intervention, somebody new came in.
“Buenos dias,” the unfamiliar voice said. The bell above the door rang as
a man I didn’t recognize came in. Obscured by the sunlight coming through the
doorway, I thought he might have been in his fifties with the way he carried himself;
all gentlemanly and good posture-y and misogynistic-y. It was only when he
walked up to the register that I realized he probably wasn’t any older than I was.
“Buenos dias.” I replied.
“¿Me puedes dar un café negro y un postre de guayaba, por favor?”
“Black coffee and a guava pastry?” I confirmed.
“Yes. Sorry. I didn’t realize...”
“It’s okay. I understand enough Spanish to take orders and know when
to nod when my abuela is talking.” He smiled politely. I withheld my opinion of
the black coffee and gave him that first. I watched him take a sip while I grabbed
his pastry. His face puckered like he’d eaten dirt. “The coffee here is awful. I
recommend a couple pumps of vanilla syrup, cinnamon, and some milk. It masks
that burnt taste pretty well.”
The corners of his mouth turned up, “Oh, I don’t like sweet things” He
held his “ee’s” longer than a native English speaker would.
“Who is this for then?” I handed him the pasty.
“My colleague,” he replied. I couldn’t tell if he was being shy or polite, but I decid-
Meliza Guitierrez

ed to let him off the hook.
“Well, I hope they enjoy it. Have a nice day.”
“You too.” I liked the way he said his “oo’s.”
After what felt like an eternity, one o’clock rolled around. I stepped outside
and immediately dreaded going back upstairs to my tia’s apartment. When
the city wasn’t ruthless or enchanting, it was suffocating. Aside from the tourists
and the fabulously wealthy, it was filled with people simply trying to survive or
barely thriving. At least in this neighborhood. I felt trapped in the monotony of
work and waiting for inspiration or the next day to arrive. I was grateful for my
aunt’s generosity after my mom kicked me out, but I was tired of seeing the same
faces day in and day out with the same pleasantries and the same safe routine, all
to keep the last honest mom and pop shop on the block afloat and keep myself
busy while I tried to figure out what to write. I had spent almost a year in this
giant city and I only had a notebook half full of ideas to show for it.
I left the familiarity of my block and went to St. Nicholas and wandered
around until I came across a relatively dry park bench. I sat there and looked
around at the frozen landscape. It had rained a couple of days ago so the old
snow on the ground was now slick ice. I could see dead grass poking through it
in patches where the snow had melted then frozen again. A dog with silly booties
protecting his little paws from the salt and the ice trotted by with his owner. A
jogger, made genderless by their baggy grey sweat suit, slowed down on the
smooth path. A couple clung to each other as they made their way across the
slippery park, the steam from their coffees mixing with their breath as they
giggled at their own clumsiness. I tried to write in my notebook, but my butt was
numb, and I couldn’t think of anything, so I went home and stared at a blank
page.
The next morning was as slower than the last. I was brainstorming
future chalkboard puns when I heard the bell ding and I recognized the stiff guy
from the previous day. “So, what was it that made you come back? Was it my
charm? Or the God-awful coffee?”
“Ah, my friend liked the pastry.”
“So, what’ll it be? The same?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Can I get a name for that order?” I grabbed a pen and prepped it on the
coffee cup.
He looked around at the empty bakery and gave a shy smile of amusement.
“Rogelio.”
“Thank you, Rogelio. It’ll be just a minute.” The buzz of fluorescent
lights filled the air.
He must have noticed my notebook because he asked, “Are you a student?”
I shook my head as I poured his coffee.
“No, I’m like most people here. Just taking up space while I find my
purpose or something like that.”
“I see...” I handed him his order. “Thank you, ah...” I pointed at my
nametag, “Alex.” I liked the way he said my name.

Gabriella Salinardo

Gabriella Salinardo

“Anytime, Rogelio.” I had to work on rolling my “r’s.” It was nice to see
a new face. I liked the regulars, but they were all middle aged and always in a
rush (all the trendy breakfast spots and coffeehouse chains stole our hip, young
patrons) and our friendly small-talk never extended beyond that.
Over the next couple of weeks, Rogelio started coming in every morning.
At some point I offered to get better coffee beans, but he declined and said
he had grown to like the flavor. He became my favorite regular. Maybe it was because
he always made eye contact or because he actually listened after he asked,
“How are you?” in his careful manner of speaking. It was like he was trying to
single handedly support La Mama; one guava cheese pastry and black coffee at a
time. One time he even suggested a pun for the chalkboard and the next day, it
featured a donut (which we did not sell) and Rogelio’s pun, ‘Donut tempt me!’
Camila had another business saving idea and I helped her place two
tables and some chairs in the bakery, so customers would find the place more
inviting. She said she was going for the shabby, chic look with mismatched chairs
but since the bakery itself was already more shabby than chic it only served to
make the place look even more cluttered and cheap. Really, I think it was all she
could afford. While we set up she told me about this “nice young man” that came
into the bakery asking about me on my day off. Being nosy, she grilled him with
questions and he told her he went to the seminary on 119th. “What a nice friend
you have,” she said. “A priest! Pero tan guapo. Qué pena... You better be careful.” I
was too surprised to ask what she meant by that.
I was cleaning the new tables when Rogelio walked in the next morning.
I returned to my station behind the counter and asked, “What’ll it be today,
padré?” I was only a little disappointed that my new friend was promised to God,
but I think I hid it well.
“Ah, Camila told you.”
“She sure did. So, is it weird when people call you father or is that something,
you’re into?”
“I’m ... not a priest yet. I’m just here for the bad coffee.” He was being
coy.
“Alright. As long as it doesn’t get you in trouble with el jefe.” I pointed
towards the ceiling and when he laughed it was like he was trying to keep his
smile a secret. I thought it was charming and I finally understood why he always
did things like that. He was practicing the tranquil, almost inhuman nature of a
priest. I saw him more often after that. I think it was easier for him to be open
with me once his big secret was revealed.
President’s Day rolled around, and the drawing of the day was a loaf of
bread and the pun was, ‘Rise up!’ Camila was out of town visiting her son for the
long weekend, so I was left to run the shop alone. It wasn’t too bad since we were
closing early for the holiday, anyway. Rogelio came by and sat in one of the lonely
tables to study like he had done a few times before. He said there was much too
noise in the library with all the silence and the praying and the Catholic guilt. (I
added that last part. He laughed.)
The ten-person morning rush was over, and I was tired of staring at the

latest blank page, so I flipped through my notebook. Its pages were worn only
from handling and not from actual writing. I cringed at the early pages with
cheesy lines like, “The stars don’t care,” and, “Just don’t forget how to love,” and,
“You have to fall before you can fly.”
Rogelio startled me out of my reminiscence with, “Is that a diary?”
“No. Well, kind of. It’s for my writing. If I have an idea, I write it here...
But I usually don’t get more than a couple lines in before the inspiration passes.”
“Have you finished one?”
“No. Not yet.”
Rogelio pondered this for a second, then nodded and returned to his
reading. I watched
him for a moment longer and scribbled down a few lines.
I closed the book and gave up on writing for the day. I decided to
address the question I had been avoiding. “So... What made you want to do the
whole priest thing?”
Rogelio didn’t hesitate with, “I like helping people.”
The answer seemed so rehearsed that I just had to push him. “Is that
really it?”
He looked up from his book and thought about it for a moment. “I read
a lot of stories about magic and wizards as a kid and I think God’s love and the
priesthood are the closest thing we have to that.”
Only somewhat satisfied with that response, I joined him at his table.
“But was there a moment where the clouds parted, a choir of angels sang, and
Morgan Freeman’s voice rang out saying, ‘Become a priest!’?”
“I don’t know. Nothing like that has happened...” He seemed to remember
something. “Well... There was this one time when I was a kid in México. My
sister was looking after me. Her boyfriend had just broken up with her and she
was really upset so we went to the city and saw a fortune teller.”
“Wait, isn’t that like, sinful or unholy or something?”
“Well, yes. I didn’t say she took me with my mother’s permission.” In my
surprise from his sassy remark, I allowed him to continue uninterrupted. “So,
we went into the lady’s house and I was amazed. There were these big tapices on
the walls, saint candles burning in the kitchen, I mean, there were pentagrams
and crosses on the same wall. It was blasphemous, but it was beautiful. My sister
started going on and on about her boyfriend and the lady said, ‘Everything will
be okay, mija. Let’s see what the cards have to say,’ and she took out these
cards and they looked like they were from my wizard books! I remember her
holding them tight and whispering a prayer. Then, when she was shuffling the
cards one of them fell onto the ground in front of me. I think my sister was about
to yell at me for ruining her fortune when the lady said, ‘Ah, that one is for you.’
I picked up the card and stared at it. It had more colors than I had ever seen at
once. It had this old, wise man on it with a big purple cloak with one hand up
and a gold staff surrounded by beautiful stained glass.” He showed me the pose
like a child playing pretend. “I don’t remember what my sister and the lady talked
about but when they were done, and it was time to go, I gave the card back to

the lady and she said, ‘El hierofante. It means follow your intuition.’ On the way
home my sister kept saying, ‘She’s full of shit! What does she know? What a waste
of money!’ But I can’t forget how much better my sister seemed to feel after that.
It reminded me of how people looked after they left confession and I wanted to
help people feel that way.”
I stared at him. It had been the most animated, enthusiastic, and human
I had ever seen him. But there was one thing that I just couldn’t let him get away
with. “You said shit.” I smiled triumphantly.
He let out an amused huff. “Is that all you got from my story?”
“Actually, it sounded more like sheet, but the intention was there.”
He put his hands in front of himself defensively. “It was a direct quote.
I only wanted to be accurate.” One of my regulars came in, so I returned to my
position behind the counter. She ordered a dozen guava pastries and five empanadas
and left. I was shutting down the register when I noticed how the dusk
and the streetlights bled in through the window and onto the would-be priest
in a horribly flattering way. I watched his shoulders rise and fall and realized I’d
never considered that priests need to breath too. Maybe he felt my staring, but he
suddenly stopped his reading and turned to me.
“Why do you write?” He asked. I kind of liked him and he was practically
a priest for God’s sake, so I told the truth.
“I don’t know... I like to describe the world around me. It helps me understand
it.”
Strangely, he understood. “Like what?”
I didn’t know how to answer that question, so I hesitantly flipped
through my book to a passage I didn’t hate. “Somehow, this city feels even more
desolate in the day than at night. The sun makes the smooth glass and metal
buildings glow. It feels exposing like the light is piercing me, looking straight
through me. I prefer the dim street lights at night. It’s an invitation for strangers
to drop their façades of contentedness so we might find it easier to coexist with
the shared knowledge that the dark is scary, but we live in that fear of it – and
each other – together.”
I looked up, realizing that it had been my turn to be stared at. He was
silent for a moment and I was suddenly very anxious about his response. He
seemed a little spooked.
“That’s beautiful,” and he smiled that great, goofy, gorgeous smile of his
that he usually hid and I kind of wished he’d hidden it because it reminded me
that he would be gone in a few months.
I pretended to organize the counterspace and he returned to reading
his book. For once it wasn’t in Latin and said Self Reliance on the cover. Hey Jude
came on for the fourth time that day and I groaned. That was Camila’s latest plan.
All Beatles. All day. Rogelio hummed along. Amazed, I asked, “How can you
stand this?”
“They were my favorite band as a kid. Or, my sister’s favorite. So, they
were mine too.”
“Don’t a bunch of their songs have an anti-religious message?” He

shrugged, and I had a bad idea. “Maybe we should go listen to some real music,” I
suggested.
“The Beatles are real music, aren’t they?” He sounded a little hurt, which
was cute.
“Well, yeah. But I was thinking we could listen to something new. Or
old. Live.”
“What?”
“There’s a jazz club on 125th. We could go.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“Okay. Yeah. Why not.” Our game of chicken ended, and it was twenty
minutes to closing so he helped me clean up and close the shop.
It was still early in the evening, so we took our time walking. It was
that awkward time between snowfalls where the city was beginning to thaw. We
passed our third oxygen bar, so I had to explain to Rogelio what an oxygen bar
was. For a second, I thought I might regret asking out this fifty-year-old man
trapped in a mid-twenties body but then we got to the club.
A gorgeous woman with a voice bigger than herself sang classic jazz
ballads. We got a table and I had drinks with a future priest. He wasn’t familiar
with all the songs, so I told him about the legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Louis
Armstrong, and Frank Sinatra. He told me about his favorite artists from Latino
music genres I didn’t know very well. I couldn’t pronounce some of their names,
so he tried teaching me. It wasn’t going well, so at one point I said, “God dammit!”
And he gave me a warning look. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but I
laughed it off anyway. My Spanish didn’t improve, so we sat quietly and listened.
The night progressed, and a few couples started sway-dancing in the
clearing in front of the stage. An older guy took the stage and the first few notes
of The Girl from Ipanema played. Rogelio perked up. “Ah! I love this song,” he
said. He did an adorable little jig to the rhythm of his song in his seat then, to my
surprise, he pulled me up to dance near the other couples. I was shocked by his
forwardness but did not protest. He was sort of singing the song to me in Spanish
as he led me a made-up style that was not as subtle as the other couples. We
attracted some stares but more so nods of approval and encouraging smiles. I had
just gotten over the embarrassment and fallen into step with my dance partner
when I noticed that the man on stage wasn’t singing in Spanish. I realized that
Rogelio didn’t actually know the words and was just mumbling until it got to the
parts he knew. I hid my smile in his shoulder.
He wanted to walk me back to my place and I figured that meant our
friendship was getting pretty serious, so I decided to tell him my life story; how
I grew up in a shitty household, got kicked out after dropping out of college, and
moved in with my aunt in the city to figure myself out. He told me about his
childhood in Mexico and I guess I always had this image of Mexico being this
awful, dirty, crime-ridden place but the Mexico he described was nothing like
that. Inevitably, we started talking about religion.

“I was raised Catholic, but my mom let me figure it out on my own, too.”
“Oh,” he said, silently judging me. “Did you?”
“Well... I don’t know. I mean, I know there’s something else out there. I
just can’t buy into the whole bearded white guy in the sky controlling everyone’s
life like an elaborate game of chess theory.” He smiled that polite smile that wasn’t
the one I liked. He was hiding his opinion, but I didn’t want him to think he had
to do that around me. “What about you? What do you think about the Big Guy?”
He took a deep breath.
“Well, the bible says—”
“No-no-no,” I teased. “I want to know what you think. Not what that
book of yours says.” He thought for a moment.
“I think God is everywhere. In everything.” That was a better answer,
but I just had to poke fun at him. I felt obligated to ruin the existential mood a
little bit.
“Was He there when I lost my first tooth?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Sure. He was there.”
“What about my first kiss? Or my first time? I’ve never been married.”
“He was there... But maybe he wasn’t watching closely for the second
one.”
We walked in silence until I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut any longer.
“What about in tragedies? Like shootings or terrorist attacks?”
He twisted his lips. “Well, I think God’s love is in everyone. But, that
doesn’t mean everyone feels it. Some people reject it. People are born with the inclination
to do good and strive for goodness.” I shook my head. I wished I hadn’t
brought it up, but this conversation was bound to happen eventually.
“What about mental illness? Is it all a part of God’s plan?”
He sighed, “In theory, yes. I believe God presents us with certain challenges
to teach us and make our souls stronger.”
“But how could He just let people suffer? There are things you can’t just
pray away.” We walked in silence and I hated what came next. Maybe I thought
he’d have the answers because he was the first priest I could talk to that I actually
trusted. Or maybe I was committed to prepping him for the tough conversations
he’d have later in his career. “What about when my dad died?”
“God was there. In the love you shared and your memory of him.”
“He was an alcoholic.” Rogelio was silent.
Or maybe I just wanted to ruin the good thing we had together. “You
know, it’s easy for you to say that he’s always there but what does that mean for
me? I can’t just trust that everything will turn out okay if I just believe with blind
faith that God’s love will take care of me.” I betrayed his trust. At some point we
had stopped walking. We were standing outside of the bodega by Camila’s apartment.
“Call it whatever you want, but you said it yourself: there is something
else.”
“Where was He that time my mom was in a car accident?”
“He was there.”

“Where was God when Camila got mugged?”
“He was there.”
Something ugly woke up inside me. I didn’t want to lose this theological
fight. “Where was He when my cousin was raped?” He was quiet. “Where was He
when my dad beat my mother?” He was silent. “What about every time I’ve ever
wanted kill myself? Where was God then?”
“He was there.” He said it in a small voice, like he didn’t believe it himself.
I immediately regretted everything since the moment he first walked into La
Mama. He looked at me like he felt sorry for me and I hated it. He was so polite
and gentle and kind, and I hated it. I hated it.
I took a deep breath and asked, “What are we doing?”
I wanted to mistake the disappointment in his eyes for something—
anything else. “I don’t know.”
I continued walking up the block and being an intelligent guy, he didn’t
follow me. My vision blurred as I headed straight for my tia’s apartment. Camilla
was up later than usual, probably having just gotten back from her trip, and must
have noticed because she uttered a sympathetic, “Mij-” before I shut the door
behind me. I didn’t I hate him. I hated myself. I opened my notebook and read
something I had written earlier that day.
I like the way you hold onto your ee’s and oo’s. I like your laugh – the
way you hide your smile – and I like it even more when you don’t.
There’s something that you love and believe in more than anything in
the world... But I’m selfish enough to wish it was me.
The next day’s chalkboard simply advertised a discount on potato balls
and I let the sound of the Beatles drown out all the noise in my head. I wasn’t
expecting Rogelio as 7:30 rolled around but the Goddamn bell rang.
“You can’t get your caffeine fix somewhere else?” I didn’t want to seem
bitter, but I figured that’s what he came for.
“I wanted to see you.”
I said nothing as I prepared his order.
“Alex, I know we have diff—”
“You can’t save me, you know. Not everyone wants to be saved.”
“That’s why I like you,” I stopped. It wasn’t a response I was expecting.
“Everyone...” He was searching for the words. I wondered if he was translating
what he wanted to say, and I wished I understood Spanish better so I wouldn’t
have to hear a mere imitation of what he actually wanted to say to me. “Once
you start the path to priesthood, everyone treats you differently. Like you’re not a
human being with emotions and opinions and.... Doubt.”
“So, you’re using me to test your faith.”
“No,” he said firmly. “People either treat me like a moral police officer or
they think I can fix everything that is wrong in their lives. You don’t care about
that.” He was wrong. Some part of me did want him to fix me. “I can share anything
with you.” That was true but I’d still find a way to ruin that trust. “You treat
me like me and I don’t have anyone else who does that anymore.” I saw him as if
it was the first time again.

Another customer came in, so he stepped to the side. They ordered two
potato balls and left. I stared down at the counter, hoping Rogelio would take the
hint and leave but he just stood there and looked at me with those kind eyes of
his. I felt stupid. It wasn’t his fault that my God failed me. He still believed in his.
“This isn’t going to end well.” I met his gaze.
“I know. But I want to try,” he replied with the sweetest smile I had seen
yet. He’d been holding back on me.
We had four more months together before he had to take his vows.
Neither of us had planned to become so attached to each other. We talked endlessly
and debated everything from abortion to the afterlife. We fought all the
time and broke up twice; if you can even break up with a “friend.” My name went
from Alex to Ale to cielito on one or two occasions, though, I didn’t know what
that word meant and when I asked just smiled like it was a slip of the tongue.
One Saturday afternoon, when the chalkboard featured a cake and read, ‘You’re
baking me crazy,’ Rogelio and I were alone in the shop. He read a book by Carl
Rogers and I stood next to him and asked why he couldn’t just be a therapist. He
chuckled and from his seated position, reached his hand around my waist in a
sort of reassuring hug. I touched his hair. It was longer and sort of fell into his
face sometimes.
We saw each other outside of the bakery too. We went dancing again
and explored places we’d never been to, but there was something sacred about
that place. We created our own religion in those quiet moments we shared
together. Our church was a failing family business. Our stained glass was the
chipped paint of La Mama scrawled on the window. Its walls were our
personal confessional.
We repeated chalkboard ads, the mismatched tables and chairs were rearranged
twice, and the Beatles turned into Elvis, then Pink Floyd, then Coldplay
before La Mama was finally put to rest.
Sooner than I’d hoped, the night came when he had to leave. Rogelio
squeezed my hand, but I didn’t look at him when I asked, “So, is this a goodbye
or a see you later?” I tried to smile but failed.
His voice was barely above a whisper, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Everything. It’s the Catholic guilt.”
I laughed despite myself, and he touched my cheek like a blessing.
“Thank you,” I said with his hand still on my cheek. We came to an unspoken
agreement not to fill the gap left between us, but I would always wonder
if it would have made him stay. The priest-to-be hailed a taxi and I looked at him
for the last time. I wanted him to look young and scared, so I could have some
hope that his doubt would win out, and I’d see him again, but he looked as wise
and understanding as ever. We parted ways without another word. There were
too many to choose from.
I went back to the apartment and made my way through the boxes
scattered around Camila’s living room to pack. I found my notebook while rifling
through my things and realized I hadn’t opened it in a couple months. Flipping

through its pages, I noticed that my entries had been getting longer. There was no
spark of inspiration, but I put pen to paper anyway.
Melíza Gutierrez is a third-year drama major here at UCI. You can catch her
later this quarter in The Pajama Game and the neo-futurist playwriting collective
Schrödinger’s Cast: 30 Plays in 60 Minutes.

Be Aware
by Cameron Marsden
I was taking a trip to Las Vegas, but I was 20. Was I looking forward
to walking around? Not really. Was I looking forward to watching the Bellagio
fountains while my friends – who happen to be 6 months older than I – get to
throw their money at bartenders, croupiers, promoters? Well, sort of because the
fountains are pretty; but also, not really. I’ve seen the fountains in videos. Seeing
it in person only added the thrilling sensation that someone might steal my wallet
from my back pocket. Exciting.
Vegas doesn’t really make sense to me. I don’t understand how something
so massive can be in the middle of nowhere, how people make enough
money to sustain it. Why people even go there. I don’t understand how American
laws just don’t apply to a city in Nevada. The fact that I can whip out my tits
while carrying a horn of alcohol on the busiest street in the city and the police
have to focus on more “concerning matters” is crazy. And the internationals see
that as the pinnacle of American society. And Americans see that as the pinnacle
of American society.
In Germany, I’ve heard of a place called the Kit Kat Club. Go look it up,
it’s a magic place filled with Kit Kats, honestly my favorite candy. And to think,
now that is the pinnacle of German Society. No really, look it up it’s amazing.
Pause your reading. Look it up.
There was one thing that interested me about Vegas. I remember, as
I followed the caravan of random cars down the grand highway of nothing,
there was a large cardboard sign. It wasn’t as big as some of the massive Denny’s
billboards, but it was noticeable. There wasn’t advertisement on it, just the word
“Aware”, spelled out in messy black spray paint.
It peaked my interest as Vegas peaks my interest. In the way that I don’t
really care for it, but it’s peculiar to me, it doesn’t make sense to me. Who the hell
is pulling over on a highway, a highway with minivans filled with Asian grandmas
whose pockets are stuffed with pennies for those goddamn slot machines,
just to spray paint a random word on a small billboard? It just doesn’t make
sense.
So, as we passed, I craned my neck to look and see if there was something
on the other side; like you would with the scantily dressed women in Vegas,
the ones you take pictures with and then begrudgingly “tip” them; how, when
you pass by, you slowly crane your neck to look back. You don’t do it because
your interested, no sir, you do it just to see what’s there.
Well, the other side of the billboard didn’t make sense to me, either. I
mean, at least the front of the billboard was an eligible English word. Maybe it
was the dessert dust, or the stale air in the car, or the crick in my neck that made
the backwards glance a fleeting one, but I swear the black spray paint on the back
spelled out “gufe”.

Now, you may be thinking, this kid is going to Vegas and is more interested
in a spray- painted sign that said a nonsensical word? Well, yeah. Fuck
Vegas, honestly. But “gufe”? “Gufe” gave me something to think about.
Is it pronounced like “goofy”? Or like “goof ”? Or maybe “gufé”? Actually,
I refuse to believe that it is pronounced like “gufé”. I would like to think that
the lovely people or person who took the time to spray paint this word onto the
billboard wasn’t a pretentious bitch. Look, if you’re reading this and the first time
you read “gufe” you pronounced it in your head as “gufé”, then you’re pretentious.
It’s almost like the dumbass kids who try to tell me that The Broad is supposed to
be pronounced The “Brode”, like thousands of years of English doesn’t apply to
the name of a museum.
I’m actually pretty curious about how you are reading “gufe” in your
head right now. I imagine that no one pronounces it like “goofy”. You probably
first pronounced it as “goof ” or, god help you, “gufé”. Actually, you probably
pronounce it as “gufé” now anyway because I made such a big fuss over it and
you read it so many times. If you pronounced “gufe” first as “goof ” or “goofy” and
now see it as “gufé”, then sorry but you just got influenced. Welcome to Vegas,
baby.
Vegas, where parents drag around their 5-year old’s, I’m guessing to
desensitize them in the harshest way possible. Did you look up the Kit Kat Club?
It has nothing to do with Kit Kats. I heard about it during a podcast on Twitch,
a streaming service, where anyone can watch. A service that is, arguably, catered
towards children. Anyway, I was listening to a podcast with a
guest star, Manuel Ferrara, a French pornographic actor. He talked about this
club that wasn’t necessarily a sex club, but a club where everything is allowed. So,
if you wanted to bust down on the middle of the dance floor, no one’s stopping
you. And as I watched, so were thirteen thousand other people, most of whom I
assumed were children. Talk about desensitization.
So, I implore, parents heed the sign on the way to Vegas and be aware.
It’s not like kids don’t have access to this stuff on the internet already but
having it so prominent in society is just shocking to me. That people can flaunt
tits in front of thousands of people no matter their age in an American city that
has laws against it and talk about inappropriate, explicit material on a gaming site
catered toward children is beyond me.
When I got home, I thought about asking my family if “gufe” meant
anything. But the last time I asked my dad what a word meant it was the word
“virgin”. Having my parents talk about anything having to do with sex is possibly
the height of discomfort. So possibly having “gufe” mean some sort of obscure
sex thing just isn’t worth satisfying my curiosity. Luckily, the internet exists and
“gufe” doesn’t mean anything.
Even I’m pronouncing it as “gufé” now. How the cruel world seeks to
mock us.
I mean, you can’t blame the podcast for interviewing Mr. Ferrara,
because that’s what kids – if not everyone – is interested in. In a way desensitization
can be good for society, so that we don’t deem adult entertainers as scummy

people. I didn’t hate who he was, but I was interested to find myself surprised that
he was polite and down-to-earth. I didn’t go into the podcast thinking: “Oh let’s
see what a shitshow this guy is.” But my subconscious didn’t see him as someone
so polite and funny, someone I could hang out with.
So, maybe parents don’t need to be that aware. Sure, take your kids to
Vegas and let them see tits and alcohol and the ugly culture that’s the pinnacle of
American society. I’m not even sure why I called it ugly. I guess that’s the sensitization
that I grew up with.
I guess it’s good to be desensitized. To go to a farm and see chickens
fucking, thinking that’s normal and then being annoyed that the couple waiting
in line is a little “too touchy”, causes dissonance in my mind. Because we view
ourselves as a sophisticated creature, we shouldn’t fornicate in public, or even act
like we want to? I understand because that’s what I grew up believing, but I don’t
understand because it doesn’t make logical sense to me.
As if eating is a taboo nature, satisfying a hunger. You could say that
hunger is needed for personal survival and that having sex is special and private
and gross. I could say shut your sensitive mouth and let people enjoy things, that
intercourse is satisfying a psychological hunger and is needed for communal
survival. So, would the Kit Kat Club be ahead of it’s time? Or one long before it’s
time? A club of heightened desensitization and freedom where we have lost the
idea that sex is taboo and the belief that no one does it or no one wants it, or a
primeval club – one with the Neanderthals.
I couldn’t say that a whole society like the Kit Kat Club or Vegas would
be better. But it would be different. So, sure, let the kids become desensitized and
let them slowly change society. Parents, point out that dingy sign on your next
trip to Vegas, tap your kid on the shoulder and make them look up from their
iPhone triple X and tell them, “Hey kid, be aware.”
Cameron Marsden

Franky WenFeng Zhang

Homeless Arrival
by Woojin Song
So, it was my first time going to the United States. No, actually the second,
though the first was when I was about seven years old or so. My aunt lived right
next to Marina Del Rey, near LAX, and my mother visited her all the way from
Seoul with me. Nothing much to remember there at my aunt’s place. Many, many
docks and yachts. Back then, I had no idea what those meant. I just liked the
Californian weather, had fun swimming at the beach of Santa Monica, and then,
sunburn itches on my back were my only life problem. It was eighteen years later
that I found out my aunt had been living in a tremendously luxurious apartment.
I recently asked my mother how my aunt had earned such money. “You know,”
she said, “she’s my sister.” When my mother was young, she struggled to escape
that shitty—which is her expression—countryside where she was born, and
raised me in Seoul, working as a dentist now and then. Dentists make quite good
money in Korea, which is lucky for me, and my aunt just went a bit further than
that.
So, it was my second time going to the United States. As an exchange student.
Not Marina Del Rey this time. Irvine was the place. My partner school was
there. When the location was decided, I called my aunt. “Good for you to be
around here, my boy,” she said. “Just about an hour away.” She got married a few
years ago, in her late years, to a Jewish investor. She was now living in a house
at Manhattan Beach, which she owned herself. “Call me if you need any help.” It
was actually her though, not me, who kept on calling so often, asking if I needed
any help. Once I picked up a call from her when I was sitting on a toilet. “Auntie,
thank you so much,” it was the twelfth time that week, and I was still in Seoul. I
cordially declined her consideration. “But I’ll call you if I need anything. Everything
will be alright.”
Which turned out to be totally wrong. Some of my friends, who knew Irvine well
said it is a good place for old and rich couples to settle, which I, at first, thought
as a compliment until I found out that I was not that old, and more importantly,
not rich. I mean, I could spend my parents’ money, but I wanted to be thrifty.
I had no idea why studios had to cost nearly two thousand dollars a month.
Around my home school in Seoul, the entire studio was mine for half or one
third of that price. So I gave up living alone. That was okay. I was expecting such
hassle. I searched for cheaper places, under 700 dollars a month. It was not easy
to look for housing in Irvine, sitting in my room in Korea. There actually were
cheaper places though like shared houses. The problem was my sex. They were
all looking for female housemates. No room for men. Boys do live around the
campus for their entire life, I know that. And where I would live, I had no idea.
By then, I was screwing up my studies in my home school, stressed out of my

mind dealing with the odds and ends of visa issues for the exchange program and
with breaking up with my girlfriend, which I admit was the main cause of everything,
so the housing was about the last straw after all those. I don’t know what
use the visa would be if I had nowhere to live, but that’s how things went at the
time. It was about ten days before the departure that I started to feel the gravity
of the situation. I was going to leave soon, without residence. Okay, okay. Okay.
Maybe I should call my aunt. So I called. And she was in Cancun. “How are you
doing, my boy?” I heard waves splashing over the line. “I can’t believe I’m staying
here for another two weeks!” Wow, great. Enjoy. See you later, Auntie.
“You shouldn’t be looking for the room with a budget like in Korea.” Peter Kim,
a friend of mine who I had met during the military service in Korea, thought
the solution was simple. “Just spend more money. It’s expensive everywhere
in Irvine.” He graduated from university in Irvine and came back to Korea for
a master’s degree in psychology. Now he was applying for a Ph.D. “You know,
Irvine is a city owned by a company. Pay it, then problem solved.” I asked him if
he was going back to the United States for his degree. “Nah,” he frowned, “I feel
better here in Korea.”
With a week left before leaving for the United States, I emailed every apartment
office around the school in Irvine. Each one of them asked my budget, and I
answered 900 dollars a month. I really didn’t want to pay a thousand for a shared
room. Two days later, one of them called me back that there was one apartment
for 900 dollars a month. It was 4 bed 2 bath share, in which I could use my own
private bedroom. 900 dollars. To me, as a standard Korean undergraduate, the
cost was insane, but with no other way, I signed the lease online. I couldn’t help
thinking of what kind of place I would live in Korea with that money. It would
be a split level studio including all amenities. I told Peter that it is so expensive. I
complained to him that I would rather sleep on the street. California weather is
not that bad, anyway.
And then Peter told me what happens to the homeless in Irvine. I thought it was
not nice. Peter explained, if there is a homeless guy in Irvine, policemen would
come. They would put the guy in a police car, and drive away. They would reach
the border of Irvine. And then, they dump the guy right outside the border.
Problem solved. I thought that was inhumane. Why don’t they take the guy to
a shelter or something? “Well, that’s how it goes,” Peter said, bluntly. “They just
don’t want to see them.” I wasn’t going to sleep on the street anyway, because that
was a joke, but I still wondered if he was also joking or not. “And there is nothing
like a shelter in Irvine.” I thought it was something like a dark comedy.
“So, when are you leaving?” Peter asked, without further explaining his intent. It
was five days later. “You dumb. Who in the world looks for his housing five days
before the departure?” True. I just laughed. And I didn’t tell him that the lease
started only ten days later. Which means, I would be homeless for a few days

after my arrival until the lease started. I didn’t tell Peter about that. It would have
made me look more stupid. “Good luck with your trip, man.” Peter told me about
some good places to go near Irvine. Pretending to be listening to him, I looked
up a hostel to stay at in Los Angeles on my phone.
* * *
It was a fourteen hour flight, and I hadn’t slept a bit. There were good movies on
the plane, but the seat was terrible. Neck-rests on airplane seats are never in the
right position. They always push against the back of my head. And I was sitting
in a row in front of the lavatories, where people move around and it smells like
shit—literally—whenever the toilet doors open. So, I watched the movies. Maybe
six of them. Those were good movies.
LAX was crowded, which is meaningless to say, but it was my first time there
after my childhood. My hostel was around Downtown. I asked the man in the
information, and he told me to ride a shuttle bus to Union Station. I bought a
sandwich at Seven-Eleven and ate it in a hall, sitting on my luggage. Soon the bus
came, so I loaded my things, and took a bus. The driver said it would be about an
hour ride. I took a seat, and fainted, and someone woke me up. At Union Station.
I was drooling. “Must have been a long flight?” The man, who woke me up, giggled.
Yes, and a short ride.
So, it was in the middle of Los Angeles. The hostel that I would be staying at was
somewhere below Little Tokyo, and above Skid Row, which I didn’t know what
kind of place it was. What I knew about Skid Row was an American band. I
decided to walk there. It was about a twenty minute walk.
What interested me as I walked through Downtown were the homeless. Of
course, I saw homeless people in Korea too, but there were some big differences.
First, there were a lot more homeless people in Los Angeles than in Seoul. I never
saw the homeless camps in Korea. The homeless in Seoul are mostly individuals,
which makes the number of them look smaller. Second, the homeless in Los Angeles
were more active. I rarely saw the homeless in Seoul actually doing anything
for their living. I mean, not to have jobs but to literally do something to be alive,
like rummaging trashcans or something. The homeless in Seoul usually stay powerless.
They just sit against the wall or lie on the ground doing nothing. They usually
move around when people are not around. They belong to the other world.
Whereas in Los Angeles, I saw many of them actively moving around among
people—among commuters, among tourists, among whoever they are. They are
part of this world. Third, the homeless in Los Angeles were more extreme in
their style. Actually, this intimidated me the most. I never saw the homeless men
wearing their trousers down to their knees. That was embarrassing, though they
were not really interested in me.
As I was walking through Little Tokyo, there were no homeless people, which

made me feel at ease. Neat village, familiar Asian styled place. I reached the
end of the village where the hostel should be. But I couldn’t find it. I wandered
around. I think there I stepped into Skid Row. There were more and more homeless
camps as I passed by. Soon I noticed that I was in the totally wrong place. I
was in a street full of homeless people and their camps. Some of them looked at
me. Some of them were wearing pants down to their knees. Now I started to feel
intimidated. I turned back and started to get out of the place.
Ahead of me, there was a man heading the same direction as me. He was wearing
pants down to his waist, and a pair of brand new Jordans. Brand new Jordans.
Thank god, I felt relieved to see a standard citizen. I tried to stay near him. I felt
safer.
But maybe I was way too close to him. He noticed me behind him and turned
around. He was wearing red glasses, a wrinkled shirt with suspicious stains on
it, and floppy trousers. And a pair of brand new Jordans. Why Jordans? I don’t
know. Now he seemed to be one of the homeless besides those Jordans. “Are you
Chinese?” He shouted. I answered that I am not. Then he took out two books
from his trouser pockets. One was in English, and the other in Chinese. Both
seemed to be the same book, just different translations. There was a Buddha in
the center of each book. “My name is Ross.” The man introduced himself. “Are
you not Chinese?” He started to read parts of the English volume. Some of the
homeless wearing pants down to their knees stared at us. Now Ross was talking
to Freddie inside his ear. “I can’t read, Freddie, I can’t read!” I think he was angry
with Freddie, because he started to hit himself on his head. I didn’t know what
Freddie did, but I did know he was not good. I tried to get away from him. I
slowly walked away. “Are you Chinese?” Ross furiously asked as he followed
me. “A Chinese guy, a Chinese guy!” he suddenly shouted. I was freaking out. I
thought it was xenophobia or something, because Ross was a white guy. What
a prejudice, but that is what came to my mind at the moment. I started to walk
faster. Ross started to walk faster, too. Then I nearly ran, carrying my luggage.
The noise was loud. Ross was still angry at Freddie and shouting at me, “A Chinese
guy!” He kept on shouting, and I kept on running.
Soon I was back in Little Tokyo. Ross was gone. There were enough people
around, who were not the homeless. I asked one Japanese lady where the hostel
was, and she kindly guided me. The hostel was just around the corner. Now I
felt really tired. I was dying. I asked the clerk for my check-in. He asked for my
identification.
And my passport was nowhere.
Where could it possibly be? I checked if it was in my pocket when I stepped off
from the shuttle bus. Then where? Where could it be? The clerk wouldn’t let me
in without it, and that was not even the worst problem. It was my very first day

in the United States. And my passport was gone. Could I do anything in this
country without it?
Perhaps it was when I ran away from Ross. That was the most likely case. I must
have dropped it there. I asked the clerk to keep my luggage and went back to Skid
Row.
It was getting dark. The homeless and their camps were still there. The guys wearing
pants down to their knees were still there. I was really afraid to search on that
street. I wasn’t even sure if my passport was there. But there was no other way.
I had to look for it. I put on my hoodie. I was lucky to be wearing black. I really
didn’t want to draw their attention. Still, I needed more. I felt like I had to look
like one of them, those who were wearing pants down to their knees.
Yet I was wearing pants on my waist.
I had to do something.

The Sky’s Flesh
***
by Sierra Myer
By now I’ve learned how to revisit the memory of that summer
Gently, feeling the shape of it
Without squeezing, without
Fully remembering
Just this once I’ll take you back with me, but
You have to run when I do,
And don’t look too closely.
You’ll wake us both up.
***
The sky breathes heavily, blue and empty, hunched over the wind turbines
and sun-seared hills. Closer. A vein of asphalt splits the patchwork of wheat
fields. Closer. Coughing clouds of black smoke, a red VW bug sputters down
I-35.
I’m inside. Nine years old. My arm drips out the car window, wedge of
glass pressing into my tricep. Little strands of hair have ripped free of my green
bandana, tickling around my face. In my lap lies a cluster of yellow tulips, tied
with a thin pink ribbon. Great, six-armed metal giants march beside the highway,
holding power lines in their fists; I wish they’d pluck me from my seat, or come
alive at the least.
“Hey, Mister.” It’s Grandfather. “Can you see the cows?” He taps on the
steering wheel, his knuckles withered like pale tree knots. “Lots of cows up here
during the summer. Lots of barbecues, and lots of cows.”
Reluctantly, my gaze falls from the swooping power lines. All of the
brown cows are huddled together in the field, tails flicking; I squint against the
glare of their tin-roofed barns as we pass. Big, stinky blob monsters, waiting to
melt together and gobble everyone up in the middle of the night. They look nothing
like the pink-nosed dairy cows from my old books. I roll the window up.
“Yeah, I see ‘em,” I say. “They stink.”
Grandfather’s laugh sounds harsh.
“We’ve got you for what, three months? You’ll be dreaming about cow
pies by the time you leave,” he spits.
Someone’s playing the trumpet from inside the car’s little mesh radio
—a low and lazy tune. Occasionally static-filled, even though it’s the only radio

station that reaches the middle of nowhere. Grandfather blows out a long breath.
“Your mama hasn’t taught you a damn thing, God bless her. Grew up
too good for us, headin’ out into the big city like she did—and where’d that get
her? Husband nowhere to be seen, stuck with a little rascal like you.” Grandfather
laughs, then reaches overs and grinds his hand into the crown of my head, splitting
my hair to the scalp. “You’re not too good for us, are you, Robbie?”
Moisture buds in the corners of my eyes, hot and sharp. Mom had said
that being related to someone meant you were automatically Not Strangers, but
the feel of Grandfather’s hand is wrong—his palm too hot, his fingertips too
rough. Words too harsh, talking about the wrong things. Not like Mom. I grip the
tulips tighter and turn again toward the window. No one calls me Robbie. Didn’t
she tell him that? My loneliness seeps into everything; it crawls up through
Grandfather’s arm like a fairy swarm, furious and lost. After a moment, his hand
falls away.
Outside, a clutch of fluffy white clouds rests on the horizon, just beginning
to spill toward us. As I watch, the clouds bloom and unfurl, slowly turning
gray.
Grandfather pulls the steering wheel to the right and we ease off the
highway, down a dirt path furrowed by tractor tires. Oak trees spring up and
stretch over the road—a mouth of branches, swallowing. The radio fades to static,
trumpet melody snuffed out by furious popping. Grandfather leans forward and
presses his toe to the gas; my teeth shake as we pound over the potholes and
furrows, hands leaping to the bottom of my seat, clutching the smooth leather. At
the very end of the road sits a single white house, speckled gray by the shade. My
stomach curdles with dread.
We slow down only when the car starts to nose up the driveway. I
unglue my hands from the seat and peer out the window, up into the canopy.
The trees are thickest here, solemnly bowing their heads high above the house,
sticking out hundreds of branches perfect for webbed-wing, pointy-toothed
monstrosities to perch on. A tiny scrap of blue-gray sky peeks through the crown
of the clearing. I press my cheek closer to the glass and flinch back, frightened by
its sudden frigidity.
The car sits silent beneath us.
“Wasn’t that a treat? Don’t tell your mama that I let you race around like
that,” Grandfather says. He pants lightly, tongue poking from between his teeth.
***
Mom had sat me on her lap three days ago, like I was a baby, and
cracked open a scrapbook which smelled like dust and ants. She flew through the
pages, fingertips precise on each edge until she found it: a wedding photo of two
people laughing, eyes pinched into crescents.
“ My Dad,” Mom said, pressing a finger to the man in a red tuxedo. Her
hands shook. The man had a big, flabby mouth and a wide face, like a Lego-head.
My feet bounced happily in the air.

“He’s kinda ugly,” I said.
She grabbed my arm, snake-like, and squeezed too tight, too tight. Her
eyelids flickered, blinking away invisible tears.
“You don’t say that to him. You don’t say that, Robin.”
I nodded, stopping swinging my feet, and began to cry.
“No, no—good boy,” she said. “You’ll be okay.” Her hand ghosted over
my face, brushing at the tears, and then it was gone, pressed to the scrapbook
once again.
“This is Mom,” she said. She stroked the figure beside Grandfather, a
delicate woman wearing Mom’s eyes and mouth. “See? You should always stay
close to her.”
“Why can’t I stay with you?” I asked, voice bubbly with mucus.
“Grandmother is a very nice lady. You’ll be fine,” she strained. Her knee
tapped out an erratic rhythm beneath me. “It’s just for the summer, and I have no
one else to take care of you—don’t you see?”
I couldn’t understand, but I felt Mom’s worry hard in my own gut.
***
The dark green quiet of the grove seems to seep in through the walls of
the house, cradling us as we enter.
“Make yourself at home, Robbie,” he says.
It’s a den. Hundreds of dreamcatchers drip from the yellow plaster ceiling,
heading down the hallway in a long trail of beaded webbing. The only light
comes from a nine-paneled window directly above us, partially open and muted
by dust. Black-and-white photos line the walls.
“Where’s Grandmother?” I blurt.
My small, blue backpack hangs from one shoulder and Grandfather
presses down on the other, doubling the pressure. In my hands are the yellow
tulips. I feel like I’m back in our little public pool, sinking deep between the rows
of mobile homes, down into the domain of the deep-end beast.
“Oh, she might just come around,” he says, voice lazy. It’s an echo of
what he had told Mom earlier, when she was dropping me off.
“Right now, I gotta go pick up some drink for us at the store first. I’d let
you come with, but people around here might get nosy about it. They don’t like
little boys drinkin’,” Grandfather says.
His words roll off me; my eyes are jumping around the room, fingers
tightening around the tulip cluster.
“But you’re not a little boy, are you?”
Nothing feels right.
“I’d like a ‘thank you,’ Mister. I’m doing your mama a big favor by taking
you while she goes off and blows her money on that fancy school.”
“Thank you.” Clipped, forced.
Grandfather smiles again, long and loud, lips peeling back from his
thick, yellow teeth. Then a shadow passes over his face and the invisible strings

attached to lips, cheeks, and eyebrows drop all at once, leaving Grandfather
blank—a wrinkled Halloween mask, eyes hollow, hungry.
“You oughta talk more, Robbie. Might give people the wrong idea.”
A shiver passes through me; again I think of Mom, long for her.
“Can I put these in some water?” My voice comes out small. I hold out
my fist, and about half of the tulips flop down at a strange angle, necks already
snapped. “Mom sent them for Grandmother.”
This Grandfather looks like a melted-version of wedding-day Grandfather.
I fight the urge to shut my eyes as he watches me, face not quite right,
scooped empty on the inside like a dead person come alive. My breath comes
fast.
“We’ll deal with the flowers when I get back.”
He is out the door; the house is shut. I’m alone with the dreamcatchers
and the long hallway of strange faces.
***
In the taxi early this morning, Mom had reached over and buckled my
seatbelt herself—something she never did unless she’d been crying.
“Don’t worry about your school lessons, Robin. We’ll pick up as soon as
summer is over.” Her eyes were frantic as she layered a purple scarf around her
neck—a scrap of color we’d found at Goodwill the day before, more hole than
yarn. “I know it’s last minute, baby. But I need to do this now. Else I never will.”
She continued spooling the thin scarf, mouth bent into a shivering line.
Her blond hair fell across her face, threadlike.
“The college is only offering this scholarship during summer quarter.
And these big East Coast schools... they don’t make exceptions for people like
me,” she said.
I had questions in my throat, but everything was held fast by a thick,
gooey fear; only a tiny sound escaped as I let my head fall against the window.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said.
The awakening sky looked like a bruise, a dark purple stain giving way
to sickly yellow between the apartment buildings. Strips of black clouds lay flat
across the horizon, underbellies glowing a hazy pink. Softly-lit serpents. Against
my will, my eyes began to drift shut.
“Will Grandfather and Grandmother have a nightlight for me, at least?”
I asked.
“Oh, Robin.” Mom rubbed my back, voice cracking with sadness. “I’m
sure they’ll work something out. And even if they don’t, I know you’ll be just
fine.”
I didn’t want to look at her, so I sat perfectly still and pretended to sleep.
Already I missed her, though she was right there, pressing a kiss to my bandana.
Lips to my hair, she whispers, “All these monsters you imagine—they’ll never be
real, no matter where you are. My sweet, sweet, scared boy.”

***
In the half-darkness, the pale wallpaper seems to swell. Grandfather’s
absence brings a different kind of fear than what I felt from the press of his
hand—something deeper, ancient, magnified by every inch of the strange house.
Tiny footsteps patter on the window above me, and I snap toward the sound,
hand seizing; the remaining flower stems snap, their bright heads lolling toward
the ground. It’s rain, falling from a pure white sky.
Droplets begin to eat each other on the glass, morphing, growing fat on
their friends’ wet bodies. A trickle of rainwater gets its fingers through the opening
and lands on the dirty hardwood floor. I’m frozen by its approach, watching
as the brown liquid reaches for my shoes.
“Grandmother,” I whisper, desperately invoking the name. But the
whole house feels dead. Nothing here recognizes me.
The rain lets go of the sky all at once, rushing down through the crown
of the forest clearing and dropping onto the roof in massive, wrenching waves;
I step through the hallway, wishing I had the courage to run, heartbeat heavy
in my ears. All of the dreamcatchers sway above me, rocked by the oncoming
storm—irritated ghosts of the house, threatening to encircle my neck and
squeeze.
“Grandmother,” I say again. The word flutters uselessly, same as my
crumpled tulips.
Because I can feel it, deep and sure: there’s no one else here.
No one alive except me, the house, and the uneasy promise of Grandfather’s
return.
I pass under the last of the dreamcatchers and into the kitchen. Across
the room, a screen door shudders, rattling in its grooves and bleeding a magnetic
white light. Water dots the floor at its feet, driven through by the wind.
Mom wouldn’t want me here. I feel the entire weight of the house’s
darkness at my back as I jolt forward and wrap my fingers around the latch. She
doesn’t know Grandfather’s strange eyes or the way this house wants me gone.
The door slides open—easy, inviting—revealing an overgrown backyard, and beyond
that, a towering forest. My hair swirls with the full force of the sweet-smelling
wind. Soaring anticipation fills my throat: escape has a face.
I let the tulips fall to the kitchen floor, slip on both backpack straps,
and then I’m running, arm raised to block the hissing licks of rain. The ground
smooshes beneath me, coating my shoes in mud. I leap over a trench and my
hands sink into thick grass. With a wild sky above, I’m myself again—Robin, a
hero.
The forest softens the noise of the storm. Wind rushes through the high
canopy, making the thick trunks sigh, and the ground isn’t yet churned to mud.
A herd of yellow slugs creeps up an old tree stump to my right. Two flat salamander
noses poke from beneath a rock, disappearing when I pound past. I laugh,
fascinated by the energy of it all, and slow down.
I walk until my shoulders sting from the rub of my backpack straps.

Somehow, the coming darkness feels safe and sleepy, like a closed pair of eyes. I
walk, and I walk, and the forest refuses to end.
I walk until the world tilts and I feel the press of mud on my cheek.
***
Warm. Another body curled beside mine, mirroring. Grass beneath my
palms. Birdsong, high above. A creek, somewhere. Warm. I open my eyes and
flinch: another boy lies beside me, watching, hardly a foot away.
Joy floods his face, and he reaches out to grasp my hand.
“I’m so glad you ran, Robin” he says. His fingers are cold. “We weren’t
sure at first, but wow—you really ran!”
Morning streams from behind his wild hair, edging him with sunlight. I
squint, bleary-eyed.
“What’reyou... from? I mean, who’reyou... Who are you?” My tongue
isn’t working right. The boy drops my hand back into the grass and props himself
up with an elbow, eyes shining.
“I can show you who I am. I’ll show you now,” he says brightly. Then he
pauses, cocking his head to the side. “Or no, not yet. Soon. When yellow morning
is done, then I’ll show you. ”
His intensity wakes me, pulling at my limbs until I sit up. Everything
about his face looks miniature, like a delicate version of a real boy, but his hair
hangs like mine—brown and curly. I lift my hand to block the sun.
“Are you a fairy?” I feel embarrassed as soon as the question leaves me,
because that’s rude, isn’t it? Asking if someone’s a monster.
“I’m not,” he says, and shakes his head, hair bouncing.
“Fairies are like,” I hold my finger and thumb about an inch apart, “this
big.”
He nods. I’m not sure why I told him that.
We stare at each other—me blinking away sleep, him looking like he’ll
never sleep again; then, after a moment, he smiles, proudly baring his tiny teeth.
“Want to go?” He stands and offers me a hand. “I think we should go.
Yellow morning will meet us soon.”
The clearing smells like rain, though the grass feels warm and dry. My
mind spins, remembering.
“Wait... You called me Robin! And how did you know that I ran away?”
“Well, white storm and I were watching you. Near the end, at least. Before
that, it was dark billow, and even before that it was purple dawn.” The boy’s
gaze drifts somewhere into the canopy as he talks, hand still stretched towards
me. “Purple dawn said you definitely weren’t going to run, but dark billow wanted
to go out anyway, just to be sure.”
His confidence in those strange words scrapes against my confusion.
“Dark... what?
“Yes, that’s almost right,” the boy chirps. I grab his hand and he pulls me
to my feet. “I like your crown, by the way.”

I shake my head, irritated, fingers finding the edge of my bandana. The
way he talks, jumping everywhere at once, feels like the start of a headache.
“It’s called a bandana, okay?”
The boy walks off, threading through a maze of sun-lit leaves. I follow a
few steps behind.
“And what’s your name, anyway? You never said.”
“You didn’t say yours either, Robin.” The boy exaggerates my name,
sounding pleased with himself.
“That’s no fair,” I complain. Webbed tree roots keep tangling my feet as I
walk. “I don’t have a name-guessing superpower.”
“Well, maybe I do! And if I do, it’s not my fault.” He laughs cheerfully,
batting at a low-hanging cluster of leaves. “You can call me Wingless, if you like
that.”
All around, the undergrowth grows bolder, reaching further and further
into our path. I stick out my arms, trying to balance on a particularly narrow
root.
“That’s a very weird name,” I giggle, keeping my eyes on the morphed
ground, careful with each step. “But it’s kind of cool. I guess.”
Wingless turns so that he’s walking backwards, facing me. The rising
and falling roots don’t seem to bother him much. “Some of the dragons call me
that. It’s not mean though—it’s like a joke.”
“Dragons?” I leap after him, holding tight to my backpack. A little flame
of adventure sparks in my chest: whatever strange world Wingless wants to show
me, I’m caught up in it now.
“Yes, the dragons,” he replies. “White Storm, Purple Dawn, Dark Billow...
remember? Those are the ones you’ve already seen by now.”
Wingless disappears around the next curve, while I stop, mouth gaping.
“Those were names? You’ve been watching me with dragons?”
Only the birds answer me, singing high above. Yellow light shines
through the treetops, burning away the last of the morning clouds. What did
Wingless mean I’d already seen them?
“Wingless, wait up!” I totter down the steep roots, feet slipping. “Where
are we going?”
A breeze stirs the silence, and I push through row upon row of wild
berry bushes. Little thorns grip my jeans and dig thin scratches into my forearms.
“Wingless? You’re too far ahead!”
Wind continues to rise, whipping the sleeves of my t-shirt. Scraps of
pale yellow sky appear in the wall of green, and I press up the hill toward them,
bending against the weight of the rushing air.
Clear and bright, I hear Wingless laugh. “Up here, Robin!”
Foliage fades as I climb, giving way to empty space, empty sky.
“Come here! Come meet her!”
The grass ends. Wingless stands beside me, resonating joy and looking
toward the cliff ’s edge.
Dragon. Staring at us. A strange sound bubbles from my chest, caught

somewhere between a scream and a laugh. This close, the turns of its massive
body are one landscape—no, an entire sky of scales, stretching all the way to the
horizon. Yellow, into gold, into colors I’d seen in the morning sky but couldn’t
ever name, not even when I dreamed about them. Only when the dragon blinks
do I notice its eyes, half-lidded and bigger than houses. With each breath, wind
rushes into the dragon’s snout, then blows out in a gust. Warm air rocks us forward
and backward, rhythmic as ocean waves.
“Robin, meet Yellow Morning! ” Wingless rolls onto his tiptoes, smiling.
“She would say hello, but she’d definitely knock us over.”
At that the dragon snorts, giving us another slow blink. I try to wave,
but my fingers barely twitch.
“She usually works until the sky goes blue and empty at midday, so she
just finished. She’ll sleep soon. She just wanted to meet you first.”
I’m suddenly nervous; how are you supposed to greet a dragon? Make
eye-contact when you meet new people, Mom says. It’s hard to tell if Yellow
Morning is looking at me, or at Wingless, or at both of us at once. I bow my head
anyways and say, “Nice to meet you. I’m Robin.”
“She knows your name, already,” Wingless whispers, leaning over. “The
dragons are the ones who told me.”
I flush, embarrassed, but Wingless looks happy. Yellow Morning’s fangs
curl out from underneath her lip, perfectly white.
“That means she likes you,” he adds.
In a shiver of movement, Yellow Morning withdraws from the cliff edge,
slowly pointing her snout toward the blue sky. She coils and flexes, roiling like a
snake; I can see her entire expanse, wingless and beautiful, as she climbs higher.
“Bye, Yellow Morning!” Wingless waves. I just stare, hands anchored at
my sides.
Eventually, she’s gone—last lick of her tail swallowed by the blue, wind
disappearing with her. Scorching sun beats down from directly above, making
my scalp prickle.
A hand touches my back and I let out a tiny peep.
“I loved how you looked back there!” Wingless says, patting me. “Your
eyes were huge!”
I can’t help it; I start to laugh. Everything is too ridiculous.“My eyes
were huge? Have you seen—” I point toward the sky, “—that dragon?”
Both of us burst into laughter, and Wingless clutches his stomach,
dropping into a crouch; I collapse onto the grass beside him, shaking with mirth.
After a minute, we begin to breathe again.
“ What are—what are the others like?” I force out. My cheeks hurt from
smiling. “The other dragons you mentioned. White Storm. Purple Dawn. Dark...”
“Billow,” he finishes. He’s lying close beside me, like this morning,
plucking at the grass between us. “You’ll meet them eventually, I would think. I’m
not sure how they choose when to fill the sky, but you’re with us for the summer,
aren’t you?”
Joy surges through my chest, so strong that it almost hurts.

“Can I?”
Wingless looks up from the grass, frowning. “‘Course you can. That was
the dragon’s plan, as soon as they knew you’d run.”
I smile and flop onto my back.
“I saw your Mom when I was riding Purple Dawn earlier,” Wingless says
softly. “She seems really nice.”
Mom: spike of longing, pinning me to the earth. My heart, still flayed
open by wonder, aches at the thought of her.
“We’ll take you back when she comes for you. Promise. Your Grandfather
won’t do anything—that’s what the dragons say.” He speaks so earnestly that
I manage not to cry. “There’s lots of good food out here. And I bet some of the
dragons will even let you ride them after a while.”
I smile, throwing an arm over my eyes.
“ Maybe we’ll even meet a new dragon! I’ll let you name it, if we do.
Wait ‘til you see Blue Galaxy—he’s so awesome, but he only comes out at night—“
“I believe you, Wingless,” I whisper. With my eyes shut, I can see bright
stars tearing away from the night sky, unfurling into flesh; lightning cracking
along a spine; pink, sunset clouds spinning through warm scales.
Wingless reaches for me, cradling my hand in both of his.
Beautifully, wonderfully real.
***
Even after I leave the memory,
There’s always something left over -
Reminders blooming everywhere.
Golden morning, edging windows
Lavender light, riding waves
Galaxies, waving through treetops/
The truth I foun d exists with the sky,
Ageless and immense:
Somewhere, dragons know my name.

Sierra Myer is a second-year English major pursuing an emphasis in Creative
Writing. She doesn’t write as much as she should, but when she does, she likes
creating pieces which marry magic and reality. In her writing, she tries to capture
and preserve each strange vision of the child at her center