fiction
I. The plain truth is that was the bitch’s name: Quimbamba. My brother showed up…
On a Saturday evening at a 5-for-Rupees 500.00 beauty salon, Lina is getting her eyebrows…
Gloria walked into La Media Noche bodega tired and hungry. She’d worked a double shift…
In English and the Spanish; translations by the author Cuando Jorge se mudó al edificio…
Nominations include: “Today I Will Bake a Cake” by Layhannara Tep, “Your Daughter Refashions the Flag into a Crop Top” by Rosa Alcalá, “Time Wave” by Racquel Goodinson,”Snap This Photo of Two Good Men” by Catalina Bartlett, “Tell me all the things you’ve missed” by Natalia Torres, “Everything is Temporary” by Nicole Callihan
It’s for you to step out of the novel’s shadow. You don’t need to stand next to anybody who takes all your shine. You have your own spotlight to bloom under that is not predicated on comparison but is predicated on your sole existence. People like to create drama: #TeamShortStory or #TeamNovel. But you don’t need each other to exist, and you don’t to be pitted against each other. Like Paul D said to Sethe: “You your best thing.”
At first I was worried that I would fail. It started as a dream that I was naked and paralyzed in the street. It started as a dream that I was falling and falling and flailing. There was no ground to catch me. Then it was a summer of summer classes all day and tutoring into the night. Then I was thinner and someone said I looked good. Then I was straight A’s. Then I looked A okay. And then I remembered to miss meals to stay on top. And then, and then, and then, I no longer dreamt I was falling. And then I was in the eye of it. I was feeding off an ocean of anxiety.
After getting shooed away by yet another business owner who couldn’t understand what we wanted, I was reminded how some fruit never sweeten. No matter how you till the soil, no matter how many kind words you speak while watering, no matter how many days you wait for the fruit to ripen, some fruit will always come out bitter.
After the chisme made the rounds and Tío had split the scene, I’d started over. Took any job I could get, hauling manure, laying sod at the golf course, planting potatoes, until I found my current employer. People had begun to respect me. My hand trembled as I turned up the heat beneath the skillet, praying that the crackle and hiss of frying eggs might mask the sound of his voice, intimate like the guitar in my favorite Roberto Griego song Un Pobre No Más. I willed my uncle to leave our casita, even knowing it would hurt Ma to see him go.