Reservoir Bitches: Stories

by Dahlia de la Cerda

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

I became pregnant and gave birth twice. Both times, I felt like a sinner because my children were not the fruits of love but of violence and degenerate sex. I baptized them Adam and Eve.

So no one would call me a bastard when I was being a bitch.

Still fully goth, though. Or, at least, we were always dressed in black. Real bad bitches. But dancing with cholos is a great cure for the blues.

I’m in it so deep that sometimes I even think I am sadness.

There is no room of one’s own when men think our bodies belong to them.

“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.” I need to let you go.

my rebellion is that I want to live, and if I don’t let you go, if I don’t let you run free, this sadness will kill me.