Reservoir Bitches: Stories

by Dahlia de la Cerda

I’m trapped in an infinite loop of bad decisions with consequences that are never not dramatic. I take the same road over and over, always forgetting it’s the wrong one, and even when it looks like I have things under control, something tells me maybe I don’t.

I’m the kind of girl who gets used as an argument against abortion.

My only companion is my cat, Ricardo. I adopted him the day after my mom died and raised him in a box under a lamp for extra warmth. He was so little I had to feed him special milk from a baby bottle. Because I cared for my mom while she was sick, it’s helped to have someone who depends on me, someone who needs me to come home. It keeps me alive, away from temptation and ruin.

The cramps came and went, and the diarrhea was annoying but manageable. My abortion lacked drama.

Women, fam. We can be mean as hell.

the devil’s wise because he’s old, not because he’s the devil.

Life’s a bitch. That’s why you gotta rattle her cage, even if she’s foaming at the mouth.

I put my life in the devil’s hands cause God doesn’t come through on this kinda thing.

I’m not into shades of gray: either you’re steep or you’re cheap, I don’t fuck with modesty.

I came looking for live music to dance to but, just my luck, what I found instead was this brutal desert that devours women, carves them up, disappears them, swallows them whole. See nothing, say nothing. But you can’t pull the wool over my eyes.

My pancreas was kinda sweet, like baby’s milk. My heart? Didn’t spit that out, God knows why.

What I didn’t do was keep the promise I made you: that I wouldn’t let myself drown in my sadness if something happened to you. But too late, I already did.

Being a woman means living in a state of emergency.

“Maybe that’s your mission. To gather the bones of dead women, to piece them together and tell their stories, and then to let them run free.”