Things We Lost in the Fire

by Mariana Enríquez

I realized, while the dirty kid was licking his sticky fingers, how little I cared about people, how natural these desperate lives seemed to me.

Maybe I wasn’t the princess in her castle; maybe I was a madwoman locked in her tower.

“We all make mistakes,” she told me. “The important thing is to fix them.” “And how does this get fixed?” “Babe, death is the only problem without a solution.”

Maybe he decided that his sadness was going to be my companion forever, for as long as he wanted, because sad people are merciless.

I’d rather forget them because forgetting people you only knew in words is odd; when they existed they were more intense than people in real life, and now they’re more distant than strangers.

“Burnings are the work of men. They have always burned us. Now we are burning ourselves. But we’re not going to die; we’re going to flaunt our scars.”

But Silvinita, oh, when Silvina burned it would be beautiful, she’d be a true flower of fire.