Breathe. (2021)
Winner of Amazon Prime Video and Wattpad's #Fear Contest
It's as easy as breathing, they'll tell you. An automatic bodily function.
___
(You recall the body as beginning and ending; the loop in perpetuum. Birth and death and rebirth in hospital off-white, lit by unholy blue LED buzz. God tunneled into black and white. You cry.)
____
It will be the first day outside, regular streets, non-essential doctor's visit, in 402 days. You counted. 402 days home, facing those hallowed walls, hands clasped in-lap, counting down days to the masses semi-safe(r) and pinpricked and immune.
____
You stare out the window, mask in-hand, grip a tight squeeze. It's not about the mask; you'll do anything to protect others. It's about them protecting you. They won't. They haven't. Your existence outside in the public is a threat. Each person, a warning. You do not and cannot know if they carry the virus that killed so many you loved, and will undoubtedly kill you, you with your [disabled] body, your inability to be treated.
____
(Antibiotics curl the body inward. You spit poison when you cry. Lifesaving medicine a life's ender. Your allergies beyond nut, egg, milk. Your body has been at war since pre-birth; mother's curse to need assistance to life—six fetuses, each named alphabetic. You were "A," became "G"—seventh. Alone. You have died. Your organs swollen, near-balloon burst. You have become paralyzed. Lost the way to walk, speak, think. Your heart has stilled, rebooted, thrice. Every virus, every disease, caught within your immunocompromised body.)
(Immunocompromised: a word you always misspell.)
____
You would not exist if your parents weren't in the medical industry. You would've died at four. Six. Eleven.
____
402 nights imagining a sterile death once more. Intubated beep. Heart monitored race. Body still. Still. Still.
____
It has never been such a challenge to go outside. You've had to fear for your life before—you, woman, Latina. Streets unsafe for you, yes. But you've never seen a disease pull apart your family like blood-orange peels. You've lost so many.
____
(It has never been so hard to be outside, inside, alive.)
____
You stare at the door. The handle. You exhale through the mask, inhale. You taste your bitter, anxious, asthmatic breath, the fear on your tongue. The buildup of bile, of pain. To be [disabled] is to exist with addition: eyes along your back, your sides. The reach for hand sanitizer. The fearful shower. Everyone a potential carrier. Your existence: risky.
____
To be medically, invisibly [disabled] is to be Icarus; the sun is the [abled] world, the existence all others live. A pandemic upends your family, your life, your future.
You.
____
It's as easy as breathing, they'll tell you. An automatic bodily function.
____
To exist outside is to risk your life. 402 days. Seven deaths. Two vaccines. One life.
____
You exit home, masked, and feel warm sun on your skin.
____
(The panic remains. You are not sure if you will ever feel safe again.)
____
Still, you walk.
____
You breathe.
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Wasps & Bees (2020)
Winner of Florida Collegiate Honor Council Short Story 2020-2021 - 1st Place
They were twins, far from identical.
The boy, first—Jack, a pale-pink polyp with white hair. Then, nothing. A stall. The air hung in-place, damp, heated with Mother’s gasps, throbs.
The second child did not come.
“She cried in the womb.” Mother breathed, wiping sweat from her cheeks, speaking in tongues, in Spanish, in Latin, in ancients. “She has her gift—she is afraid. Her responsibility, her power—"
Mother could not give birth in a hospital; she was not native to the land. They would be taken, chained—babies too. Even if their wrists were too small for chains, their necks would be enough.
She pulsed, pushed, for hours. She tired, continued. She pleaded to be cut open, gutted—and when her lover refused, she did it herself, ripping the blade across the swell of her stomach.
The ground ran red, but shame—she gave birth indoors. The crops outside, their farmlands, cried for her death, for her blood. They too were starved.
Father, crying, shaking, screaming at his lover for what she’d done, reached in and pulled his child free. The girl, second, Shel: skin like umber, hair raven-black, body larger, stronger. She did not want to be born.
The twins were the sun and the moon, the sea and the sky—they were polarities, two sides of a coil, and they were spun on their axis, compared, constrained—Shel an echo of her mother, Jack an echo of his father. Native, nonnative.
Blood did not matter: skin, only skin.
Father buried Mother in the back of their home, beneath the corn, to be forgotten. Her body fueled their growth for years, for years.
—————
(Cont. // In the process of being published & edited!)
Alone. (2018)
Winner of Florida Collegiate Honor Council Short Story 2018-2019 - 1st Place
“Bye, Ground Control. Thanks for trying.” I end, voice crackling like dry ice. Head dipped low, eyes ahead, I press the button to my COMM panel—the last tie I have to Earth—and the screen flickers, sizzling static, before being curtained black. I see my reflection—haggard, exhausted; sunken-in eyes that are darker than the screen before me; overgrown, matted hair; skin gone gray from being away from my home star. The screen—that dim, empty screen—faces me. My reflection’s barely visible, like a ghost, flickering beneath a twitching light above.
I’m not even sure if they’re listening anymore.
Fear’s a crippling thing, something I’ve befriended, held close to my chest, swallowed—something that lives and breathes within me, a monster-turned-ally, but loneliness, that is a beast I’ve struggled to defeat. No blasters, no strength, no reckless abandon: none of that can save me from it. Loneliness.
It’s been two years and twelve days since I’ve seen another human being in-person, since I’ve reached out, felt warmth, a heartbeat, a pulse. Since I’ve hugged, kissed, touched. Three years and twelve days since Orpheus took off with me in it, the sole passenger.
Above all else, I just want to get home.
Home. You hear that, Dan? Ground Control? Home.
Home, God, home: warmth above, endless, spooling over the Earth from a star that had too much energy to give. Step outside, raise your arms, and you’ll bask like a lizard, bake like a damn cake—but you’ll feel that heat, that sunlight, and it’s as though God himself is holding you and smiling down at you. You’ll feel the wind through your hair, which was shorter then, ruffling your clothes—it’s like you’re a kid again, hair being tousled by your elders, lips parted to snaggle-toothed, imperfect grins on both sides, giggles reducing us, me and you, to children, but we wanted the freedom that children had. We wanted that joy. And we were joyful.
As was I in the Sun.
I was, Dan.
I’d look like a crazy person out there, taking in the light. But I guess I knew back then that I’d miss it, that I’d have a reason to miss it. To miss the blinding, real light—to miss the only holiness a God-forsaken universe could bring.
I used to hate the heat, you know—to sweat and flip the Sun the bird because dammit, all I wanted was to see snow. I’d never seen snow, you know? But, the Sun. Our Sun. My Sun, Dan.
It’s a miracle that we exist, humanity—and I guess it’s a miracle that we’ve lasted so long, too.
No, correction: that we did last, too.
______
(Cont. // In the process of being edited & published!)
Reflection, Introspection: COVID-19 Cut into Segments of an Orange (2020)
Winner of Florida Collegiate Honor Council Poetry 2020-2021 - 2nd Place
1.
Enter Stage Left:
I am:
Seated, facing a wall, hands clasped in-lap, expression
neutral. Lips so thin and flat a line I think of
electrocardiograms, post-asystole: Grandpa, death
in February, three days after the twenty-first echo
of my broken birth. I saw him then, January’s end;
unresponsive, mouth a concave hollow, strength bled from
cancerous bone, eyes a plea for God to swallow him whole.
(At the time, I wished to not see a living corpse.
Later, I am glad to be allowed that final goodbye.)
____
(Cont. // In the process of being edited & published!)
This is Not a Love Story (2013)
Winner of Mensa America's Write Tight{ly} Contest 2013
It would start just as any cliché love story does – she would walk through the empty halls, her head bent low. A messy nest of curly black hair covers her face, hiding deep-set brown eyes, and rectangular-framed glasses. She doesn’t wear makeup; she doesn’t have the time.
Cradled in her arms are multiple books, heavy and thick; she was at the library, studying.
Across the deserted hallway, a boy stands proudly. His head is held high, and a cocky Cheshire grin spreads across his face. In his arm is a basketball; school is long over; he returned from practice.
They come closer, and the boy bumps his shoulder into the girl’s.
She tumbles and falls, and her books fly out of her arms and splay across the floor. She yelps. He watches her fall, and she looks up from the ground.
There is no sparkle in his eyes, no apology. Their first glance wasn’t magical or mystifying. Her heart didn’t speed within her chest at seeing his eyes, blue and bright.
He didn’t rethink his decision, and he didn’t see her as beautiful. He didn’t notice the miniscule golden flecks hidden underneath the layers of chocolate in her stare – he saw nothing.
He didn’t extend her his hand. He didn’t say, “I’m sorry about that. Here, let me help you.” He didn’t grab her books and pull her up.
She didn’t blush and take his large, surprisingly soft hand. Afterward, they didn’t talk as they walked to the bus.
She didn’t introduce herself and say that her name was shared with a famous composer, a male one at that. He didn’t reply in saying that his name was for both girls and guys, and they didn’t laugh together. She wouldn’t know his deep, hearty laugh; he wouldn’t know her soft, delicate one.
They wouldn’t share a seat on the bus and talk about funny stories, and he didn’t talk about his odd fascination with classical music, being random and all – he loved spontaneity.
She didn’t tell him about her favorite, Winter, by Vivaldi. He didn’t squeal like a fangirl and tell her about how it was one of his favorites – although, Spring was his preferred season of the four. They wouldn’t quit talking, never stopping.
After their first conversation, they wouldn’t meet many times later at secret rendezvous. She wouldn’t share more of her favorite songs and vice-versa.
They wouldn’t listen with open ears, and more importantly, open hearts.
He wouldn’t eventually share his number with her, and they wouldn’t call each other nightly. They wouldn’t do the one thing both of them wanted, even though they were too young to know – or so they thought:
Fall in love.
But none of that happened, because this is not a love story.
*
“Watch where you’re going.” He barks sternly instead.
“Okay.” She replies and gathers her books as he leaves. They do not fall in love.
They never see each other again.
Because again, this is not a love story.