And then. . .

I once knew a woman who was fierce. She stood at the helm of her ship every day, dark hair flowing in the ocean breeze ready to face whatever the sea held for her.  She manned her ship in the vast open ocean and always managed to keep the small ship from capsizing. The ocean, not always friendly to sea goers, seemed to regard her with respect.  She worked hard on her ship and even when waves and storms crashed against the sides of the boat, she held quick to helm in even the darkest skies.  At night, she would stare up at the stars and plan for what was next. The pinhole lights against the stark black background held all the wishes she made every night. She lived like this for longer than anyone knew. Her boat was always moving back and forth across the sapphire seas. Until a storm that not even she could handle rolled in unexpectedly. The bright blue skies shifted into darkness. Try as she might, the boat capsized.  She fought and swam but the waves threw her t...

I was 17 when I visited my best friend in San Francisco. We'd know each other since elementary school and as a birthday gift, she got me a plane ticket to see her. I'd never been to California and everything I saw amazed me and looked better than anything we had at home. We were walking down the hilly streets of the city when a gypsy lady stopped us.  "Palm reading?" she asked.  It was the first time I'd ever seen a gypsy in person. Large hoops, a scarf purple scarf tied around her head, and a mole on her chin. I shook my head.  "I'll read yours for free," she said point her gnarled finger at me.  I looked back at my friend, up and down the street that suddenly seemed empty, and held out my hand. What the hell? It was free?               She stared and the dips and valleys of my palm and the deep dark lines that have always made my hands looked older. She looked up and said, "You have a writer's hand. It can tell gre...

"Isn't it pretty to think so?" She threaded her fingers into his hair. It was dark and smelled musky like it needed to be washed soon. She rested her nose on the top of his head. "Pretty to think what?" he asked. "To think that this," she gestured with a shrug "will not last." He pulled away from her,"But I wanted  it to last." He looked at her, eyes wide and clear. "This is the worst day of my life. Why do you think it's pretty?" He pulled back even further the lines of his face etched deeply between his brows. "I just thought--I mean it's pretty to think there will never be another moment like this again. Even if it's horrible, it's pretty to think you can never lose him again. The way you feel will never happen again." She looked at him and reached out again, but this time he pulled away and pressed his back firmly against the worn brown couch. "I can't believe--I m...

"At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great." The old woman looked down at the small brown constellations sprinkled on her hands. "But weren't you lonely?" the kid asked. She smiled, small, but it stayed in her eyes and lit them brighter than the flicker of fluorescent lights overhead. "How can you be lonely if you are a part of something bigger than yourself? Everything I've given has been for something better, greater. My acts will live longer than I ever will." This time she stayed quiet and the kid down at his hands, the skin taut and smooth. In the background he heard the garbled voice over the intercom, "Next stop Meridian Plaza". "I'm not sure what you mean, or even if I understand, but--" He looked back at her hands and reached, cradled them in his. The skin was warm. She looked up surprised. He searched the small creases lining her face, some deep and shadowed, ot...

She was silent. The silence so loud it was as if the world had been put on mute. It was just them. He reached out and ran the thick pad of his thumb along her bottom lip as the other cradled her neck.                                                                                                  ***** "How was your trip?" he asked, fingering the arm rest of the chair. The rectangular shaped desk between them was more than desk. It embodied the tangible gestures as they looked away from one another and fiddled with imaginary things around them. It was the space between two people who once loved. "It was good," she said, looking down then back up at the ...

I was 13 when she fell five steps away from the front door. I slept with my mom in the front bedroom of the red-bricked Craftsman style house. The window was open to let in the cool night breeze when we were awoken by a soft yell, “Leticia!” My mom woke complaining, “’¿’Ora qué?”  I sat up, rubbed the sleep from eyes, and looked at the clock. 2:15am. I jumped out of bed and ran outside when I heard my mom yelling at my Ita though.  As I helped her lift my grandma I saw she was covered in something red. The acidy smell of tomato hit my nose and realized she had fallen carrying a glass bottle of Clamato. The glass had broken against her left breast. Once we got her inside I saw a deep slice close to the top of the soft skin and realized the red stains were Clamato mixed with blood. My mom grunted and yelled as we sat her on the bathroom toilet seat. She stomped down the hallway to her bedroom to get dressed, “Qué estaba haciendo, Amá?” she yelled. My mom always lost...

I want to lie in bed for a few days and curl into the sheets until they become arms who embrace me as I sleep.  I want to sleep in until 9am, stretch in the sunlight streaming in through my bedroom window, and just stare with blurry vision at imagined dust motes.  I want to read voraciously,  the way I did when I was younger. I'd read through the night and force myself to shut the dog-eared pages when the sky night broke into indigo.  I want to curl into his arms, not because I'm tired, but because I can't help but breathe in the smell of his his hair even when it's ripe with the scent of last night's run.  I want to write until my book is finished, until the pages I've clung to for the last year finish their fight for freedom and I've nothing left but to begin again with something new.  I want to....

This week I'm on spring break. I had many plans. I wanted to work on my book. I wanted to spring clean the house. I wanted to tackle the garage. I wanted to post and sell more things on Craig's List. I wanted, I wanted, I wanted. So, far I've checked my email, emptied my DVR, and slept. This week has been good though, hermit-ish, but good. There's something odd that happens when you allow yourself to just be. I let my brain stop dictating what I was going to do and let my body chose to sit on the couch, to take a nap, to go back to the couch. Usually, I have lists constantly running through my head. Imagine a computer updating, white texts filling up a black screen,  that is my brain adding more tasks to the queue. But, the last few days my brain has frozen and the cursor is just blinking waiting for me to hit enter, to restart. The best part is that this is very rare for me. I think it is very rare for everyone, but I recommend it. Especially at this time of year...

The other day a friend and previous classmate asked, "Do you miss the program?" She was referring to the time we spent at UTEP completing our MFA in the Creative Writing department. In May it will be a year that we graduated. Last year at this time I was knee deep in trying to finish my thesis under a pile of student papers I needed to grade, memories coming to life on the page, tears, half a sandwhich, and coffee. Did I miss that? Hell no! But there were things I did miss. After being in the work force for five years prior to entering the program I enjoyed the free time, the odd scheduling, just sitting down with a cup of coffee and talking about books. I enjoyed the slow in pace after being rev'ed into red for so long. Now, I am not rev'ed, I still have free time, but now there is the worry of "What's next?" In the program I was surrounded by like minds, we talked about books and writing, we stayed up into the wee hours of the night giggling over h...

One of my favorite hobbies is people watching. I love to see how people gesture with their hands, the stride of their walks, arms swinging out, flicks of hair. There are so many messages being conveyed at once it's hard to ignore (either that or I'm creepy). Many times I use these people in my work when I write. I take interesting nervous ticks and shuffles, word choice and diction, and make them my character's. For example, today while walking around campus I saw a guy  with slunched shoulders, as if the backpack he was carrying itched. Without seeing his face I knew he was uncomfortable. It was as obvious as a girl who's had on cheap stilettos four hours past their comfort time. There was something interesting in the guy with the itchy backpack, and it wasn't until he turned that I realized why he was uncomfortable. Almost ever inch of his body was covered in tattoos. There was no order or reason to them, they weren't delicate pieces of labored artwork, th...

When I was a child, between the ages of six and eight, I remember trying to stare at the sun. My mom and  grandma Ita, told me, "Don't stare at the sun, you'll go blind!" But still, I tried to stare. I stared through warm red flesh tinted eyelids. They trembled as I tried not to open them against the sun's heat, knowing if I did I would squint and my eyes would water. I stared on cloudy days as the sun's arms poked in and around light gray puffs of teasing rain clouds. I stared as close as could on cloudless days until my eyes stung and watered from the brightness. The small muscles around my eyes contracted into one another as if hugging my eye in protection. "Mom, I can look at the sun with sunglasses on!" "No you can't! You'll go blind!" she said exasperated. I stared through tinted sunglasses but tried to look in and around the brightest spot, well, because I didn't want to go blind, but I wanted to see the sun. T...

her Voice was like a warm blanket in a cold room soothing as it surrounded me cuddling against her Voice calms me in this white, sterile, space where she comforts me even after I press buttons play  click rewind click play click on the tape with her   Voice

When I write I don't think about anything else aside from where my story is going. Where will it take me? Do I like where it's going? Does it like where I'm taking it? It's not until much later and many edited drafts past the original that I think about reading it aloud. Last, night I read two pieces I'd never read aloud before. "La Trenza" which I'm excited is about to be published in the latest edition of Cream City Review and "Dimming Lights" which is a small heavy piece I used to divide my memoir into sections of before and after my grandmother Ita's, death. Last night, I read them in front of an author who I read when first figuring out how to write my own work, Rigoberto González. I read his memoir Butterfly Boy: Memoirs of a Chicano Butterfly amongst others when I was still undecided on what shape my book was going to take. It was interesting because I felt as if I knew him, already had a relationship with him, and I wanted to ...

Yesterday, I went for a bike ride. It was the early evening, when the sun is still out, but the nighttime sky is already creeping up to wrap us in its cozy dark blanket. I hadn't been on a bike since my childhood, and until yesterday I wasn't quite sure if I could still ride one well. The well is still debatable. I pushed off on the right peddle, swaying from right to left for a bit like a child first learning to walk, but after a few moments I was zooming down my block. I looked straight ahead, the black asphalt wide open to me, ear buds in my ears with a hint of music so I could still hear cars, and relaxed. Then, I wobbled again. For the rest of the bike ride I tried to remember my form to maintain my balance. As I peddled the crunching sound of ashalt accompanied the noises of my ride. I rode around for about 30mins, and in that time the old saying, "It's like riding a bike," came to me. I was on a bike of course I was going to remember it.  I thought abou...

Yesterday I submitted a story for a contest. As I typed in my credit card information for the entry fee. I said a prayer over and over in my mind, "Please God let me win something. Please God let me win something." After the culmination of days and months rolling down a hill and snowballing into years without stepping foot into a church, my Catholic upbringing of spending every Sunday on a hard wooden pew with my grandma Ita, has not left me. I sat in a noisy coffee shop quickly rereading a story, I've read 100 times, one more time to make sure it was really ready to send out. I attached it quickly to the email, exhaled, let my fingers hover over the keys and finally hit enter, sending a piece of my heart into cyber space for someone to look over, read, and hopefully connect with it. The heart of a writer is both tender and calloused. We pour pieces of ourselves out onto paper for people to judge. Perhaps I should say the heart of the artist, but I can't think ...

Three years ago I transitioned from saying, "I'm a Department Manager at Nordstrom," to "I'm in Grad school." Each time I said it I felt a little less naked, careerless. A year in, I took a trip to London, and in getting to know two people I'm now lucky to call friends, I was asked what I was going to do. "I'm a writer. I want to write," I replied. The words were still new to my mouth, sticky like caramel, resistant to dissolve and sticking to the back of my throat. I imagined the stickiness in my words wasn't apparent as I chewed them out. Three years have passed and I'm now left with the label, "I'm a writer," and I find that this is one of the labels I've enjoyed the most. I want to wrap myself in all its letters and cozy into them like an over-sized blanket. I want to knit the multi-colored blanket larger with my own words and stories until I'm completely surrounded by them. I want to breath and live wi...

Yesterday I went for a walk in downtown El Paso. The older part where they are trying to turn the hood into a postcard where everyone is smiling brightly and sunlight reflects off chemically whitened teeth.  I won't get into how I feel about parts of it: disappointed and choked with things being forced down my throat as the city officials place their hands on the back of my head. Or how I feel about the other part of it: nostalgic with it's restored beauty and I remember my childhood, clasping my grandmother's sweaty palm as we walked the downtown streets. As I walked by Firefighters Memorial Park, a small corner hidden behind tall buildings and homes, I snapped some photos. The sun was bright and unforgiving--it must be called that in El Paso because it's the best description--but I still wanted to look around and get close to the vintage light posts which have replaced the tainted silver ones that used to be there. Beads of sweat were already beginning to surface ...