Yerba buena

by Nina LaCour

It hurt to eat and it hurt to be hungry. To be awake was to be in despair, but her muscles grew sore from inertia.

Annie was gone and Sara didn’t understand how the world was still the world. How could she be sitting in a diner with this plate of food, how could her feet rest on this floor, how could she unroll her paper napkin to discover a clean set of silverware inside? But she’d already lived through that particular shock once, so she knew it meant nothing when she took a bite and it tasted good. It would taste the same whether or not Annie was alive.

It was the most fascinating part of academia, Emilie thought, that even trashy television could be significant if you looked at it through a certain lens.

There was only so much grieving allowed when it was over someone who was never really hers.

Emilie knew that things could be good—beautiful, even—and then, without warning, they could be over.

It gutted her—how easy she was to let go.

One of the girls’ voices was raspy, loud in a way that showed how much she liked to hear herself talk.

Still, she felt that she deserved that kind of beauty if she craved it, especially if she made it for herself. She didn’t feel out of place in it. Her grandparents had known their worth and kept reaching. They’d dressed in tuxes and ball gowns despite being turned away from restaurants and jobs. They’d written love letters in the midst of a war. They’d danced through displacement and heartache. They’d made rich lives for themselves from the little they were given, posed in front of their houses as the camera shutters clicked.

“It’s good to see you,” he said. “I mean, it’s terrifying to see you—my stomach’s all fucked up right now—but it’s good, too. Can you stay in here for a few minutes? I don’t want anyone to see us together.” They were surrounded by cheese and milk and cream, thick slabs of meat, long sheets of pasta. She shivered, she could see her breath. What was she doing, standing there in the cold? “No.” She laughed. “I’m not waiting in a refrigerator. You can, if you want to.” She unlatched the heavy door, stepped into the warmth of the kitchen.

ok queeeen

That night, Emilie’s phone lit up while she was sleeping. In the morning, the first thing she saw was the photograph of Sara’s kitchen, delivered just after midnight, no words to accompany it. Emilie sat in her bed, holding the phone close to her, zooming in to study each part of it as clearly as she could. She saw a stained sink, imagined Sara standing over it. Saw the worn curtains, the loneliness, the grief. Saw the ferns and the redwoods through the window. She waited for a message to come, but nothing else followed. And still. She recognized a love letter when she saw one.