The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

by Zoraida Córdova

Orquídea’s favorite color was the blue of twilight—just light enough that the sky no longer appeared black, but before pinks and purples bled into it. She thought that color captured the moment the world held its breath, and she’d been holding hers for a long time.

The road ahead was open, and he hit the gas, like if he went fast enough, he’d fly.

Orquídea didn’t like it because she knew she wasn’t a flower, delicate and pretty and waiting to be plucked. For what? To be smelled? To sit in a glass of water until she withered? She was more than that. She wanted to be rooted so deep into the earth that nothing, no human, no force of nature, save an act of the heavens themselves, could rip her out.