Monstrilio

by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

I believed that flower was my son reincarnated. One believes the stupidest things in grief. I spoke to the flower and called it my son. And then I laughed because how ridiculous—how cruel, really—it would have been if my son was reincarnated as something so ephemeral, frail, and beautiful. I killed that first bloom with one swoop of my hand. Dead again, my son could become something else: the shell of a tortoise, strong and ancient, or a hideous fanged creature deep in the sea where he’d see wonders even he could’ve never imagined.

To wither is not the same as to break; to break is to have pieces to put back together, and to wither is to dry up, to wilt, to lose bone, to die, and death is the most boring. I needed to see pieces. So I broke the vase. He looked at me with bland pity, as if I were the one withering.

I liked the rain in Mexico, somehow kinder.

My mother thought I was a monster and didn’t love me because of it. This thing, an actual fucking monster, was loved.

There was a time I fantasized about someone proposing to me, their eyes deep in love, someone who wanted to announce to the world that we were each other’s.