Monstrilio

by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

Our son died before the dogwood pushed out its first flower, a bloom so simple with four white petals and a burst of yellow-green in the center—a beginner’s flower.

We didn’t so much exist as much as we haunted, and with no one else to haunt, we haunted each other.

In the same sentence he called me a monster and asked me to hold him.

I often didn’t understand my mother’s schemes, but despite never having said so, I believed she thought of Lena as the one person who deserved me. The one person, perhaps, who I wouldn’t ever swallow whole.

WHEN I WAS ELEVEN, the age Santiago was when he died, I threw things out of my bedroom window to learn how they would break.

this love doesn’t make me feel better.”

I wanted her to stay with me even if the price of her company was keeping the monster too.

I was jealous of the monster, how it didn’t care what it was or did. No shame.

In the end, I agreed. Of course I did.

Here I was again, trapped in this family.

and I enjoyed the particular sense of joy one gets when feeling small, because when small, someone will protect you, or at least, someone should.

I had expected Peter and me to end. Maybe that’s why it was so good between us. I had no other motive to be with him than to enjoy him.

M found out he enjoyed art. Art had no answer, he said, and no right way to be.

I had wanted someone to drown with together, but now that I was seeing this Magos, I realized she would’ve pulled me down faster.