I lie in bed and turn my head to see your face illuminated by the forest fire outside our house. I ask if you need anything at the store, since I plan on going after work tomorrow to get some bread and apples. You blink a few times, shake your head, say you’re not sure, too tired to think, but will tell me if you think of anything. I kiss you goodnight, tell my phone to close the curtains, block the growing light from the forest fire outside our house.
Tag: literature
Sunrise at Bryce Canyon
You're on the edge of a plateau overlooking a valley of hoodoos dusted with remnants of yesterday's snowfall. Predawn light is faint, cold; the air shivers in short gusts of wind. In a century, the platform your feet are on will not be there, eroded by air and water down the cliff face's arches like frames of a cathedral's stained glass windows.
rivers of colonizer blood
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
You live your life like nothing happened.
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
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.
They start the meeting with a breathing exercise.
“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?
A Mutual Aching to Leave
Each section is based on the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the day from March, 2022.
I. cardiffian, n.
I start my day watching river water flow into the bay.
II. barley sugar, n.
A candy shop by the footbridge switches its sign from closed to open. The display case filled with fudge, hard candies my mom would like. I consider buying them, before remembering she’s gone.
III. beastie, n.
A dog walks by that looks like hers. No matter how far I travel, I cannot escape her memory.
IV. interrrobang, n.
I keep landing on inconsequential memories, not ones with thematic resonance or impactful consequences. Why do I keep thinking about the time her tea kettle vibrated on the element, her worried exclamation asking me what I did, her laugh afterward scolding herself for jumping to conclusions?
V. toyetic, adj.
I used to run across the house barefoot on Saturday mornings to beat her to the tv so I could watch cartoons. She’d bring me breakfast, which I’d absent-mindedly ignore while children would command small monsters to attack each other.
VI. kente, n.
I head back to my hotel; wrap her urn in a cloth made by her best friend, gifted at her memorial back home; place it in my backpack to take her on a Dr. Who walking tour — something she asked for in the hospital.
VII. anythingarian, n.
As I walk from landmark to landmark, I debate what to do with her ashes. She told me many different ideas, locations, never settling.
VIII. chipmunk, n. and adj.
During a break for lunch, a chipmunk approaches my table outside the cafe, looks me dead in the eye. I see her. In those eyes. It’s like she’s sending me a message.
IX. bandulu, n. and adj.
A voice emits from the eyes. “Rialto Beach. Scatter me on the rocky shore.” I open the permit application when I get back to my hotel, but the letters blur, the boxes checker. I book a flight back home. I’ll just go the coast and do the thing.
X. zombocalypse, n.
People walk around the airport like packages on a conveyor belt. I sit alone by my gate in an uncomfortable pleather chair when someone walks toward me, sits in the seat right next to me. It is my mother.
XI. cuddy wifter, n.
A notepad appears on her lap, a pen in her left hand. She draws quick lines to make feathers of a great blue heron standing in a still pond. “I want so much to be at peace.” Her voice a tired drawl.
XII. amaxophobia, n.
The ceiling dings. An announcement about my flight boarding soon. “I can’t believe you flew my ashes across the planet. You know I hate flying.” “You said you wanted to see the places in Dr. Who. And it was a walking tour.” “You can’t believe everything a dying woman tells you.”
XIII. bassa-bassa, n.
The ceiling dings. My boarding group is called. She stands before I do, stomps her feet, yells at me for putting her through this. People walk through her as she screams.
XIV. belove, n.
She continues to guilt me as I walk through the skybridge, down the aisle to my seat near the back of the plane. I’m sure she will go on for the whole ten hours until we land in Seattle. I will do whatever is needed to give her peace. It’s what a son should do.
XV. overshare, v.
My guilt is immense. Guilt about making her travel; guilt if I hadn't traveled in the first place. There is no winning. My guilt is immense.
XVI. utopiate, n.
My ZzzQuil kicks in somewhere over the Atlantic; I fall asleep. My feet bare, toes dug into the edge of sand pulled under by the surf. Soft wind, quiet roar, the sun behind a pale canvas of clouds.
XVII. flaithulach, adj.
The last time my mom saw the coast — winter — a last escape before chemo kept her homebound. She stood on driftwood logs, arms wide, a deep breath of salty air. Ocean spray or tears, I’m unsure.
XVIII. powfagged, adj.
An overhead announcement of our imminent arrival in Seattle wakes me. My eyes struggle open. My mom's voice crescendos as blurs transition into shapes. She scolds me for falling asleep while she was talking.
XIX. credentialism, n.
Baggage claim, she draws me in a graduation robe, holding a diploma cover. “I wish I could have seen it.” “Me too.” “You shouldn’t have taken that semester off.” “I had to. You are more important than a piece of paper.” “I was dying. That ‘piece of paper’ would have been your key to a successful future.”
XX. bestiary, n.
I wait for my Uber in the parking garage. Midmorning, the smell of concrete and gasoline. Five Subarus drive by ten people and one ghost waiting for their getaways. A blue Prius pulls up. The driver leans their purple hair out of the window to announce my name. They offer to help with my suitcase, but I decline, placing it in the backseat, until my mom mutters under her breath. I put it in the trunk.
XXI. wych elm, n.
The driver makes small talk while my mom complains about how everything’s changed. They stop the car just past the driveway under the tree in our front yard whose branches leave a fluctuating pattern on the hood. I transfer luggage from their car to mine while my mom taps her foot, stares at the mailboxes down the road.
XXII. free solo, n.
I take 512 to I-5 to 101 for a beat, route 8 to 12, then back to 101, but clockwise, along the coast — the sun sinks into the pacific. She watches it all in silence.
XXIII. siu mei, n.
The full moon exposes a near-empty parking lot. The rocky shore tinted blue, except for an orange spot at the driftwood’s edge. A family sits on logs around it, laughing, singing.
XXIV. light fantastic, n.
My mom walks over the logs to the wet sand — no footprints — and dances to the singing family.
XXV. imagineer, n.
I wake up to an overcast sky — a matte canvas behind my fogged windshield. My mom's urn secure in my backpack beneath the passenger seat. It’s time for her final walk along the coast.
XXVI. archaeobotanist, n.
“Before you were born, your father drove us out here for a weekend in the summer. Rialto was pretty unknown back then — hardly any other people were walking the shore. You could really hear the waves crash and the rocks shuffle beneath your feet. “We sat on a log right around here for a break halfway to Hole in the Wall, and I just stared at the horizon. The crashing waves surrounded me. Then your father, that sweet man, put this flower in my lap — looked like a paintbrush imbued with fire — so orange, so warm. “I kept that flower in a notebook for years. I pressed it between the pages I wrote about the trip. “I never wanted to forget.”
XXVII. dayside, n. and adj.
After a rest, Hole in the Wall in sight, I take her urn out of my backpack. It feels like she would want to see it approach, feel the sun one last time.
XXVIII. saketini, n.
She squats over a tide pool to poke a crab hiding under an anemone. It flinches, untouched. She laughs. “Yes,” a sigh, “That’s what I needed.”
XXIX. chip, v.
The rock juts out into the water. Hole in the Wall, an arch at its end. Tide’s coming in; I have to move fast. I step around tide pool edges barefoot, quickly, before they’re buried.
XXX. monophobia, n.
Under the arch, anemones sway in tide pools sloshed by the incoming tide. I hesitate. Her urn, opened, in my hands. I know I need to. I know she needs it. But what will happen? What will happen when she is finally gone?
XXXI. jeune premier, n.
I scatter her ashes along the tide pools on the north side of Hole in the Wall. I look south to her standing on the other side. She walks toward me through the arch, dissolves in beads of light, which expand to the Hole’s rim, fade to an overcast sky.
Odds & Evens
Each section is based on the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the day from February, 2022.
I. bak kwa, n.
A new year, another long day corralling teenagers into an English class reading a book half of them won’t open. Stayed late again, grading essays, finalizing semester grades. The smell of pork in our foyer from the dinner you’re cooking.
II. crafternoon, n.
You’ve been working late, like every other January. The sun sets before you’re home — before you even start driving, I’m sure. I created a sun using some tissue paper from the tub of wrapping stuff in the closet, hang it over the gas fireplace, switched on, so you could bask in its warmth.
III. haterade, n.
For 15 minutes, I ramble about the grading system erroring out all afternoon, making me hand-enter each grade for my 170 students. You listen patiently to complaints I’ve made so many times before.
IV. orthogonally, adv.
After I place food on the table, you take your usual seat on the side of the table to my right — the same seat you took on our first date years ago, saying that the seat directly across from me would be too far away.
V. shakebuckler, n.
I finally stop talking and ask about your day. You talk about the traffic downtown on your way to city hall, an argument you had with Councilmember Meyers about building better infrastructure for busses and bikes around town. “He said to me, no joke, ‘You bring this issue up at every damn council meeting. We simply don’t have the funds.’ And then, when I brought up last year’s increase to police funding, he slapped the folder out of my hand!”
VI. antiquating, n.
Meyers has been — and always will be — stuck in the past. I’ve argued with him — constantly — throughout my entire tenure on city council.
VII. oojamaflip, n.
There’s a term you always use to describe Councilmember Meyers that I can never remember until you say it again. The memory plays back, but the audio muffles. I see your smile, I hear our laughter, but I can’t hear the word.
VIII. froideur, n.
I continue, “It’s like he can’t even entertain the idea he might be wrong or should change course ever. He just double-downs on every. single. issue. Even Louis Armstrong would call him a moldy fig.” You laugh.
IX. chicken finger, n.
Some students eat in my room at lunch — the commons’s chaos too much for them. They carry little cardboard bowls, small cartons of chocolate milk. We talk while we eat, and they ask about you. When I tell them about your infrastructure bill and Councilmember Meyers, they are as heated as you were at dinner last night. They ask if they can do anything to help, and I get an idea.
X. chopsy, adj.
Meyers gives a longwinded speech at our next council meeting — the first Monday of February. His prattling is punctuated by his wrinkled cheeks shaking every time he sneers the word “homeless.”
XI. bonze, n.
My class’s next unit focuses on world religions, so I invited a priest from the Buddhist temple across town to talk to my kids. They talked about community.
XII. japchae, n.
I take a long lunch after the morning session — long, because of the time it takes to get to my favorite Korean restaurant across town, both by foot (because of the distance) or car (because of the traffic), which are the only viable methods of travel due to the inaction of city council.
XIII. rakeshame, n.
Kids tend to talk in simplified terms — good people, bad people, nothing in between. So when my lunch group talks about organizing a protest, I have to remind them (albeit begrudgingly) that Councilmember Meyers is a person, not a monster.
XIV. passado, n.
The restaurant is empty, like most days, despite signage outside detailing their deals, their signature dishes. They greet me by name (and title). I watch car after car pass by.
XV. maple leaf, n.
The season’s last leaf whimpers on a branch outside my classroom window. Change begins with whispers on a breeze.
XVI. anecdata, n.
While my lunch cooks, the daughter who runs the cash register tells me her family’s history — how busy they used to be, before Main Street became a highway, starving side-street restaurants like theirs.
XVII. foul case, n. and adj.
It’s so hard to not step in when your kids — so full of passion, energy — stumble over their words, to not take the reins. They need to learn this, do it themselves. You're just there to support them.
XVIII. haggis-headed, adj.
My heart hurts as she gives me my lunch. I want to help them, and every other family-owned business in my district, but — but. I stumble over my words. I can make promises all day; promises don’t help people. The laws need to change.
XIX. witches’ broom, adj.
Every day more kids show up to prepare for a protest on the 14th. They complain about their families’s stores struggling, not being able to get anywhere on their own. They call Councilmember Meyers a fungus.
XX. whoo-ee, int.
I wake up Sunday morning while you’re making breakfast, my phone bursting with notifications. The top one is a message from my assistant with a link to an article in the Tribune in which Councilmember Meyers calls my plan “unamerican,” “an attack on our way of life.” A day before the vote and he pulls this. I hate how little I’m surprised.
XXI. enoughness, n.
The kids decided on a walkout at the end of 4th period leading to a march to City Hall. They timed it so they would arrive just as arguments on the infrastructure bill would begin. They created signs, flooded Instagram and Snapchat, built a crowd to overwhelm the sidewalk they’d have to take there.
XXII. dwaal, n.
As the session gets closer, I sift through the notecards of my speech, eyeing the window to the courtyard. You said your students would arrive as the session began. What if they don’t show up? What if I fumble my words? I miss the gavel marking the start of the session; Meyers takes the floor.
XXIII. gyaff, n.
One of my students in sixth period tells me some parents joined the march with wagons full of water bottles and granola bars from Costco. Only one-third of my students remained at the end of the day. I’m out of the parking lot before the buses.
XXIV. genericide, n.
Meyers moves through the usual talking points as a crowd forms outside. They pour in, all these kids, fill the balcony, signs waving about their independence. His speech drowns in their cacophony.
XXV. garderobe, n.
I have to park in the library parking lot a block away from city hall, because all the street parking is taken. Some students shout to get my attention from the middle of the crowd outside. They clear a path for me to get inside to the staircase to the spectator balcony. I look over a mountain range of heads just in time to see you stand up to begin your speech.
XXVI. woofle, v.
“What my colleague fails to realize is that our community is growing. This growth is beyond the comprehension of our predecessors, who fervently believed that sprawling outward was their best option — an option supported by the modern real estate community and some members of city council. “The sprawl is unsustainable, both in a physical and a communal sense. We have neighborhoods extending out of our city limits into unincorporated areas, but the children in those incorporated neighborhoods attend schools within our limits, within our care. Those children — like the children filling the balconies now — need to have access to our city’s assets: our parks, our schools, our stores. They must be able to traverse the land in our care effectively and safely- whether that be by foot, bike, or public transit. “The dependence on cars has hurt our local businesses. Many small stores, the family businesses that built this city in the first place, are struggling, collapsing due to a declining customer base, primarily due to the siphoning of routes to Main Street and their shops being one block too far off that path. “This bill, which I authored, allocates city funds to the creation and maintenance of resources to fix these problems: sidewalks on streets within school zones, bike lanes on major roads throughout the city, buses with more accessible and reliable routes. “Certain members of this council have called this plan ‘unamerican.’ And, they are are correct if we only take an antiquated view of what America was. If we look at what America is, what America could be, this plan is as American as it gets. “The vitriol with which some members of city council use to denigrate this bill is antithetical to the promises they’ve made to support their constituents and their community. “We should be fighting for our community. We should be fighting for the independence of empowerment of our youth. We should be fighting for our local businesses. We need this bill to aid in these fights. “Thank you.”
XXVII. antical, adj.
Thunderous applause as you step away from the podium. Your name chanted by students in the balcony. Your face so full of pride, confidence, triumph. You wave when you find my face in the crowd. My heart is so full. I love you so much. I am so proud of you.
XXVIII. jump-up, n.
The path of progress has a steep incline, many switchbacks, but eventually, we will reach the summit; the future — the line where the sky and ridge meet. There is no one else I’d rather be on this journey with than you.
A Time We Were
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.
A Tsunami Advisory
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.
M. Espinosa 