"The Breakup", "Verses about me—I hope—in her Snoopy diary", "The Map of Your Treasure" by Albert Rodriguez

The Breakup

I leave this with you—

a few lines, hastily scratched on a page gone limp with the perspiration of sorrow.

The paper retains, I believe, the faint chill of my grief,

and my grief—what else?—bears the stale imprint of your desire. Bravo.

You’ve always had a talent for undoing.

The Destroyer: yes, that name will do. I bequeath it to you without malice.

Do not search for me.

I shall be elsewhere, in some God-forgotten hamlet the mapmakers have mercifully missed,

 living in quiet congress with my own lamentations.

Your love, as it turns out, was counterfeit—

and now, at last, the world concurs.

Verses about me—I hope—in her Snoopy diary

So here’s the deal:

 He’s basically a Neanderthal. Stone jaw. Big mitts. Cro-Magnon vibes all the way down.

 But God help me, he delights me.

He speaks fluent bear.

 Not like “roar roar” bear—real bear. Actual ursine communication.

 He whispers into the wind and animals answer back. Owls. Foxes. Once, a bison.

No kidding.

When he walks through a field, it’s not romantic.

 Every flower gets crushed.

 Every petal screams silently. It’s kind of beautiful. Kind of tragic. Like most things.

His masculinity goes before him like a warning flare.

Like: Caution. Primitive force approaching.

He breaks things. He bites.

 He’s bitten me, and—surprise!—sometimes I like it.

 There. I said it. Cancel me.

He might not be entirely human.

 Might be 60% animal.

 Might be 40% sadness.

 Might be 100% wrecking ball.

But our love-making?

Earth-shattering. Literally. Once, a shelf fell down.

Maybe that’s the only thread tying me to him.

And if that makes me shallow—then I guess I float.

The Map of Your Treasure

There’s a trail I walk

when the night presses in close,

when the air thickens with want.

It begins at your brow,

salted with sweat, like the Gulf air in August,

runs the line of your neck

where the skin grows soft and shadowed,

moves past the place your breath stutters

to the dip of your belly,

until I reach the ocean of you.

And when I do,

your toes curl like leaves in heat,

your breath a rush of wind through pine and field.

You make a sound—

not quite word,

not quite cry— and the sky splits open like a wound,

galaxies pouring from the seam.

In that moment,

time forgets itself.

The world rights its wrongs,

and life—

wild, beautiful, trembling—

begins again.

Albert Rodríguez is an emerging writer based in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Borough of Manhattan Community College, his fiction has appeared in Five on the Fifth, Litro Magazine, White Wall Review, Platform Review, Across the Margin, Modern Literature, Ink Pantry, Literally Stories, Active Muse, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Fictional Café, Yellow Mama, and The Piker Press, among other periodicals.