Helium

by Rudy Francisco

Good Morning Get out of bed. The day has been asking about you. It dragged the sun into your room this morning, pulled an entire disco of light through your curtains, hoping that all of this gleam would be enough to get your attention. This is how today says, notice me.

Horizon I hope I haven’t already driven past my greatest moments. I hope there is something beautiful on the horizon that’s just as impatient as I am. Something so eager, it wants to meet me halfway. A moment that is diligently staring at its watch, trembling with nervousness, frustrated, and bursting at the seams, wondering what’s taking me so long to arrive.

I’m still learning how to let endearment sit until it’s ready to be consumed, hold it to my lips and sip slowly.

I walked in my sleep, I slept in my walk, I walked backwards until I saw you for the first time, and I could barely muster the courage to introduce myself all over again. I’ve been trying to find the right words.

I left notes in random places, hoping that you would stumble across them. I carved our names in trees, and then prayed it would jog your memory. I whispered your name in the wind, hoping somehow, maybe some way, my voice would reach you, but it didn’t, and I died. I died early. I died young with breadcrumbs in my hand, so they buried me and when they buried me, they put these coins over my eyes, and I used them as bus fare to get back to Earth, just so I can look for you.

I want to say, this sadness is the only clean shirt I have left and my washing machine has been broken for months, but I’d rather not ruin someone’s day with my tragic honesty so instead I treat my face like a pumpkin. I pretend that it’s Halloween. I carve it into something acceptable. I laugh and I say, “I’m doing alright.”

Mess On the day you couldn’t hold yourself together anymore, you called for me, voice cracking like two sets of knuckles before an altercation. I found you, looking like a damaged wine glass. I hugged your shatter. I cut all of my fingers trying to jigsaw puzzle you back together. When it was over, you looked at the stains on the carpet and blamed me for making a mess.

V...

They will push you away, tell you to leave, but have no idea how good you are at following instructions. When you vanish, but your ghost becomes a guest they cannot get rid of and the memory of you plays resurrection with their smile, they will ask where you went, if you will come back and why you gave up so easily, as if they didn’t own the voice that requested your disappearance. They now know solitude does no...

I whispered you stardust. 6. I spoke you into sunflowers.

You cracked hourglass with sand spilling from behind your ribs. You wasted my time.

So when you choose to spill like this, bleed like this, cry like this, your pain becomes an exhibit. You hang your trauma on the wall, ask patrons not to touch, but only half of them respect the signs.

Eight: I think I’ve seen you somewhere in her smile. I feel like I’ve heard your voice in her laughter. I bet if we dusted her heart for fingerprints we would only find yours. Nine: I have this envelope. It’s full of all the butterflies I felt the first time she relaxed the Velcro on her lips and smiled in my direction. I think most of them are still alive. I suppose these belong to you, too.

He was an African-American kid who spoke Spanish, loved country music, wore cowboy boots, played jump rope and had a look on his face that said: I wish a motherfucker would say something. None of us said anything. For show and tell, he brings in his pet chameleon.

And we often forget that sexism is a family heirloom that we’ve been passing down for generations. As men, it is important that we start asking ourselves, What will the boys learn from us?

She is a stuttering soliloquy. A wounded symphony played by an orchestra of her family’s I-told-you-so’s. A tattered woman who bleeds like an oak tree. Her life story is just a sandpaper love song written on a napkin full of all the reasons why no one should ever try to hug the rain. You always end up soaking wet and by yourself.

Sometimes, our actions join hands and become behaviors that are too complicated for lips to say out loud, so instead, we just liberate our flesh, letting skin speak on our behalf, the language of those who are just as afraid of commitment as they are of being alone and we speak it like it’s our native tongue.

Most days, I wonder what she carries in the luggage underneath her eyes. I wonder if those bags ever get too heavy for her face. But instead, I let those questions sandcastle inside of my stomach. I amputate the parts of me that have grown fond of her smell. I wash my sheets and I think to myself, most men are proud of things like this.

To You He puts guilt in the air and waits for you to breathe, tries to tailor the blame until it looks like it fits you, turns the story into a gymnast and convinces it to flip. He rewinds the movie, excavates the plot, digs out your patience, makes himself the narrator and the hero. He sketches you as the antagonist and suddenly his transgressions become deleted scenes. He blames you for his sadness. And this is how the wolf cries boy.

To Him I’m just sorry that she had to be your fortune cookie. Broken so you could learn a lesson ...

And Then After Our last conversation ended with yelling. We both said things we didn’t mean. I heard there’s a woman in Palestine who makes flower pots out of used teargas grenades. From this I l...

Back then, I would cover this ocean at night only to unleash it again in the morning, hoping someone will notice the tide and perhaps compliment the water.

it must be nice to feel so safe, you have to invent new ways to put yourself in danger.

and most days, I know how to grab my voice by the handle and swing my voice like a hammer. But instead, I picked it up like a shard of glass. Scared of what might happen if I didn’t hold it carefully because I know that this much melanin and that uniform is a plotline to a film that can easily end with a chalk outline baptism, me trying to make a body bag look stylish for the camera and becoming the newest coat in a closet full of RIP hashtags.

Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America. We don’t need to invent new ways of risking our lives because the old ones have been working for decades.

and suddenly it’s 98, R&B is young and there are still songs on the radio that can make you want to love something.

In 2012, Pedro Reyes, an artist from Mexico City, convinced his government to donate the guns to him so he could turn them into musical instruments. So somewhere there is a tambourine a drum set, a guitar all made out of things that were used to take people’s lives, but now they create a sound that puts life back into people’s bodies, which is to say, a weapon will always be a weapon but we choose how we fight the war and from this I learned that even our most destructive instruments can still create a melody worth dancing to and sometimes isn’t that also called a battle? I wonder how long it took to convince the first rifle that it could hold a note instead of a bullet, but still fire into a crowd and make everyone move.

I turned his nose into a fountain. My fist was five pennies. I closed my eyes, I made a wish, I came home with bloody knuckles, and it was the first piece of artwork we hung on the fridge. I remember staring at my hands the same way you stare at a midterm when all your answers are correct. I had no idea what class this was but I did know I was passing and isn’t that what masculinity has become?

A bunch of dudes afraid of their own feelings, terrified of any emotion other than anger, yelling at the shadows on the wall, but still haven’t realized that we’re the ones standing in front of the light.

I am learning that this body is not a shotgun. I am learning that this body is not a pistol. I am learning that a man is not defined by what he can destroy. I am learning that a person who only knows how to fight can only communicate in violence and that shouldn’t be anyone’s first language. I am learning that the difference between a garden and a graveyard is only what you choose to put in the ground.

One day, I came across a picture of a strange-looking violin. The caption said it was made out of a rifle and I was like, someday that can be me.

In one of my earliest memories, I am eight years old, I have a fistful of afternoon, and I am asking the summer if it will always be this glorious.

I remember taking a deep breath. Trying to get as much July into my lungs as humanly possible and thinking maybe I’d be able to convince it that 31 days just isn’t enough.

I take a cup and a napkin. I catch the spider, put it outside and allow it to walk away. If I am ever caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, just being alive and not bothering anyone, I hope I am greeted with the same kind of mercy.

I relaxed, it bloomed and I forgave you before you even apologized.

The kids are playing a game that they made up themselves and changing the rules every five minutes. Their smiles are so big, you can fit history inside of them and still have room for right now and the future.

The Cupid Shuffle is common ground and the wobble is a peace treaty signed by both generations.

Tell me. Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues.

Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address.