risa

Hay algo entre las hebras de tu pelo, algo que el viento se rehusa a llevarse.  No lo vi antes, cuando te arrastraba escaleras abajo.  Debí haberlo visto antes.  Un trozo de metal oscuro no se pierde facilmente entre esa mata de pelo rubio.

El agua se encargará, supongo.  Todo se enredaba en tu pelo mojado: sus dedos, sus labios.  Hay látigos, ahí, sostenidos por mil grapas invisibles.  Serpientes y coronas, todo alineado y mítico.  Nada brilla igual en el agua.

Hay algo en la palma de tus manos, marcas que yo no hice: no puedes culpar mis cuerdas.

Te quemaste sacando pan del horno: todas fuimos panaderas.  El levantarse temprano para hacer algo tibio y único que se vendía por docena.  Al mediodía, todo es frío y lo vendes a mitad de precio.  A la noche cierras y rezas por el amanecer.

Hay una pestaña incrustada en tu ojo, parpadeas y parpadeas y no la puedes sacar.  No te puedo soltar las manos, no.  Si nos conociesemos, tal vez, me pedirías que te sople el ojo, como lo hacía tu abuela. No te conozco lo suficiente para desatarte.

Hay algo que huele a sangre y sabe a bilis, algo entre tu y yo que me hace morderme el labio.  Los dientes cortan carne y somos cada vez más los neandertales en esta tierra.

Estas aquí, descontextualizada.  Quiero odiarte, quiero conocerte.  Quiero saber qué estoy cortando.

No es lo mismo carne de res que de caballo.  No es lo mismo.

Te ríes de mí, desde el otro lado del espejo, allí, debajo del lago.  Ries y parece que gritas.

Tal vez somos más parecidas de lo que pensaba.  Porque cuando río yo, parece que lloro.

Había algo entre las hebras de tu pelo, pero ya está resuelto.  El agua pasa por ti como lo hace por todas nosotras y te limpia. 

Meto las manos al agua y rezo por que amanezca.  No habrá rojo en mi levadura ni metal en mi harina.

Nadie amasa en silencio.

Parallax

You shift your point of view, just a little, an inch to the left.  And you find the world is turning on its head.

You spin, the galaxies demand it.  

You learn.  There is so much to learn.

You bleed, because there is always enough blood.

Everything will be a little twisted, from now on.  Just a little to the right.  Angled just so.

When you close one eye and tilt your head back, it almost (almost) looks like love.

Yo fui esto

Hace tres años y medio, yo fui esto: este corto, estos planos, esas palabras que dicen los actores, estos movimientos de cámara, esta nostalgia.  Fue el final de algo.



Hace seis meses escribí un cuento que casi nadie ha leído.

Hace un mes terminé un guión que nadie ha visto.

Voy, poco a poco, a abrir la puerta que dejé que se cerrara en mi cara.

Tal vez se metan los lobos y me despedacen. 

Mientras tanto, les dejo esto que fui.

Arabesque

“Practice makes perfect,” she said, under her breath.

Again no answer, again no question.

But everyone knew what she meant. She hadn't been perfect. So she must not have practiced hard enough.

In her neighborhood, on street corners, sometimes people would talk about her. A man passing by would ask, do you remember what happened to her?

She had gone away with such high hopes, perfect pliés and that impeccable arabesque. She had come back with a broken heart, and calloused feet that no man would touch.

She hadn't said a thing, but somehow they all knew. Her knees never bent like that again.

And still, practice makes perfect.

She would brush her lips with burgundy and smile at possible suitors. Her eyelashes batted.

They all looked away.

She would twist her arms in impossible ways, palms facing the sky.

Once a little girl asked her, “how do you make your arms look like the dry branches on sycamore trees?”

“Once you've cried enough, it's easy,” she'd answered. Step, one, two, three.

“And why did you cry?”

“Because I danced for an audience that was never there.”

Once in a salon, her nails slick with polish, she confessed softly to the one-eyed lady with the brush. “He looked at me like I was breakable, and so I broke. And then he looked at her.”

The one-eyed lady told someone with two eyes, who told an old lady with four. Versions of this story floated around the streets, down the block, to the school. There, in the evenings, she taught them to forget the throbbing feet beneath them.

So the little girls who dipped into pliés and pirouetted clumsily all knew. If they weren't careful, they could become her.

They had to practice. Otherwise, no matter how far back they bent, they would never be enough.

esquecer

she'd forgotten how to hate him, and in many ways it made him less real. a book she'd heard about but never read.

in truth, it wasn't that.

the problem, boiled down to its most dangerous form: she'd learned to love him.

it had been an educational experience. she'd made all the old mistakes and she'd made up some new ones, just for him.

she watered his plants and laughed at his jokes and pretty soon the bluejays flew south and all that was left was a flurry of unanswered calls and the sensation that she missed everything.

he always tasted like spices.

on New Year's day, she walked through the empty streets. charred remnants of fireworks and a year gone by, and she couldn't remember his mother's maiden name. it was a sign, it had to be.

her heels clicked on the sidewalk and she wondered, "is this it?"

tragedy never holds on to memory.

and memory is such a fickle lover.

dancing on my own grave

feet against cold stone

and you, so far, i can hardly smell your hair.

i always wonder which one of us will pull the trigger first.

possibly me, probably you.

you were always faster.

you were always scared.

pirouette pirouette pirouette

kiss kiss bang bang

grand jeté

everything the scent of earth and grass.

everything dark.

we were both so heartless.

pas de deux
pas de deux

the girl who knew too much

the girl who knew too much never slept as well as she could have.

she whispered secrets to herself in the mirror.

she had all the passwords, all the keys.

but none of the doors seemed all that attractive after a while, and so she dropped the keys from an eighth-floor balcony, one by one, missing pedestrians by a hair.

on the calendar, her last day was already marked and she marched towards it with no trepidation.

the girl who knew too much didn't sleep enough.

she kept one eye open at all times. she trained it on his shape on the bed beside her.

the girl who knew too much did not trust.

she just... knew too much.