Our Share of Night

by Mariana Enriquez

Please don’t leave me alone, haunt me. He’d said it in English, “haunt me,” because there were no words in Spanish for that verb, not embrujar, not aparecer, it was haunt.

those strange eyes of his, with their multicolored irises—flashes of blue, green, and a little yellow—were

But when Juan stood up from his wicker chair and kissed both her cheeks, all those men and women seemed like the practice sketches of a clumsy painter, tentative versions made by a hand that was learning, until finally it drew Juan and gave him life and said, This is it, this is what I was looking for, the perfect finish.

Maybe not, when you’re very sad it’s easy to forget things.

Don’t blame her. I do blame her. I blame her and I also forgive her.

Renunciation is easy when you have a lot, he thought. He had never had anything.

“I’m more interested in you than anything else now.”