Boy Clouds of Xquic
If she stays too long in the sea, she will see all her son’s bedroom wash by, shaking the trees. She heard he waited for hours outside of the record store, his jacket stained with biscuits and gravy and all the words from “The Streets of Laredo.” She used to sing that song off-key, and a ceramic rooster in their windowsill clanging in the dust told her to shut the fuck up. The dust in the sea folds over his jacket, ballooning over the kelp and burning.
I Forget You
She gave her sister broken strawberries as a gift. When her sister ate them, the seeds collapsed in her throat. When her sister had eaten all the strawberries, she tried to find the field where she had picked them, but she couldn't, and she wandered from home, eating the fog.
Saturns
When her balloon got caught in the milpa, she couldn't sleep for a whole week. She didn't know the dirt loved her, and when the balloon lost its air, it fell into the soil and made a new planet, and when the corn asked her to name it, she was too tired to answer.
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