Monstrilio

by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

I believed she thought of Lena as the one person who deserved me. The one person, perhaps, who I wouldn’t ever swallow whole.

This place knows me, and I know myself in it.”

When my mother died, Uncle absorbed all the grief and accumulated it inside his body so none of it reached me. That’s why he’s so gnarled and bent at odd angles. After Santiago, I expected to gnarl too. I wanted my grief, but instead I was left with a horrible nothingness, and I got really scared. But then I realized fear was a thing I could feel, and I clung to it. I was afraid of my loneliness. I was afraid I would never have anyone to love again.

People can endure quite a bit, more than we think we’re able, but Magos was only now developing a callus for loss.

I kept my apartment full of trinkets that encased moments I believed were worth remembering, a physical accumulation of my life in order to make sure it wasn’t passing by unnoticed. Some of these things retained their memories: a brunch where I laughed until my belly ached; a trip to Argentina, farther than I ever thought I would travel; a day out in the rain; a complicated and successful surgery. But many others had given up their ghosts and stood soulless: a small Talavera vase, a framed poster of a film I couldn’t remember watching, stained glass butterflies, a cat alebrije with a broken tail. I should’ve gotten rid of them, but I was waiting for their ghosts to come back.

“I think he hates me. Or not hate. Like I taste bitter.”

“I don’t know if I want it to pass, Flaqui. Maybe it’s okay that we taste bitter to each other.”