After “Exterminate All the Brutes” by Sven Lindqvist.
your vision framed by planks salvaged from a ransacked village wrinkles in your brain wagon wheel tracks across the plains your home warmed by the flames of broken treaties the tump-tump in your chest bullets entering temples your veins rivers of colonizer blood
After Gifts of the Crow, by John Marzluff and Tony Angell.
I cannot forget. Whenever I walk by a blue Camry, your voice replays in my head — each hoarse syllable. I see your face in every cedar branch, every streetlamp aura. I cannot forget. I’ve tried waiting years, traveling as far as I can from you — but the past always comes back like the tide on the shore. I cannot forget. I want to scream every well-practiced retort I’ve bottled up — but they all come out as one guttural shout. I cannot forget.
The last time you were drowning, they came to see to you after school. You were washing mugs in your classroom sink. They watched you, said you were methodical — a word you associate with supervillains. Scars in your vision danced on the whiteboard behind their head when you talked about your week.
“Take a deep breath in,” their voice echoes from a speaker above your head, “and out.” When was the last time you were able to breathe deeply? Everyone else closes their eyes, breathes synchronized and slow. How do they do it so easily? Your shoulders are tight as piano wire. They say to inhale light, exhale negativity. What if doing that leaves nothing left? Your eyes dart around the room between each calm face — you are alone. Why can’t you be like them? Why did they invite you here in the first place?
I’ve typed half an email to you a dozen times, desperate as a maple reaching over a scenic byway. Do you remember when we used to communicate through the wind? I could hear your voice, your thoughts, just by how you exhaled through your nose during one of Mr. Slater’s lectures. We could be states apart, but I would still know; thoughts were leaves on autumnal breezes falling on the mossy forest floor. Heavy currents eroded our bridge, felled trees snapped our power lines, space debris brought down our satellites, and now you’re just ones and zeros — a silent amalgamation of pixels.
She asks if you’re awake. Your eyes struggle open. Her silhouette blurry in your tent’s doorway against the morning’s overcast sky. Your throat attempts a word. She tells you not to panic — a volcano erupted across the ocean; the National Weather Service said there’s a chance for a tsunami along the coast where you’re camping. “Not a warning, an advisory.” You nod your head, eyes closing. She zips the tent flap closed as she leaves. Brisk air bites your face, which peeks out of your cocoon. You see waves tower over the shore, lift your tent, rip its stakes out of the ground. You wonder whether you and your sleeping bag would float along the surf to the cranberry fields down the road. You wonder whether that would be the worst outcome. You see your classroom; your students; a painted rock gifted by one, defaced with a slur by another, left under your desk. You feel failure, consider the possibility they would be better off with another teacher. You remind yourself: your brain does this all the time, there is evidence to the contrary. You can’t see any.
A stop before a three-hour drive home. A subject I, at fourteen, avoided. A hospital. I walked in last, stared at the tiles on the floor until I was nudged to say hello. When I looked up, I saw him. A gown. Wires. Tubes. Shadows from an overhead light. My mind saw him die and I cried. No words. He frowned — scowled, maybe. “Get out of here with that!” he yelled. I remember him raising his arm up to shoo me away. My mom gave me the keys to her Expedition. I sat there trying to find air. When she joined me, she asked, “Why were you crying?” My thoughts intercepted by arguments and counterarguments shouted across a crowded conference hall. Reverberating echoes off a tall ceiling. No words. I leaned my head on the window away from her, watched the world blur.
i fade in and out of the present like a maple branch’s shadow on concrete like the stars in a city’s sky like a siren’s doppler effect like the public’s interest in climate change i fade in and out of the world like a radio’s static on the highway like a cell phone’s reception on the coast like the tide of a rising sea like a retina scar against clear blue sky your lips keep moving, but words don’t make it ashore
sometimes, you feel like a passenger in a car. in motion, but cannot see out of the windshield— the fog too thick. sometimes, you try to protect yourself, give yourself a shield. it is thick, cold; it buries you.
Do you think trees get scared when the fog rolls in and they can’t see their friends? That’s a question I would ask you if you weren’t swallowed by the galaxy’s ever-growing throat. Instead, it’s a question I ask myself on my drive home under Sara Bareilles singing about stirring cinnamon into coffee. I climb out of the bedroom window and onto the once-ours roof after dusk that night to watch the sky go through rapid puberty. You don’t notice how much the lights from town pollute it until your favorite constellations, your guideposts, start loosing limbs. Are you watching the same stars fade away? Maybe you’re walking on the sidewalk of the gentrified neighborhood downtown trying to decide whether to spend your grocery money at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. Maybe you’re sleeping in a box underground. Maybe you’re dust swimming in the Puget Sound around Orcas Island. Maybe you’re star stuff floating out there somewhere, slowly trying to reclaim the sky. I think I like that one best.
M. Espinosa 