Sofia Mosqueda

Mei,

​

I dreamt of your koi: orange stars floating belly-side up in the blue. The water’s edge fractured

reflections; your mouth sunken / like rotten fruit. You held them, fingers slipping, nails sinking

beneath the folds of sea glass scales as sunbleached air imbued with their gills. Koi don’t have

stomachs. Pharyngeal teeth grind at the back of their throats, smooth, rounded molars crushing

until every morsel fragments into dust. Koi cannot overfeed, cannot swallow food that blocks

their digestive tracts, or else they’ll fall ill, lose weight, or die. Koi have fragile flesh. A body

may be strong, outer shells hardened against wind / sun / brutality, but our insides are delicate,

unaware of all that pricks skin, cuts tissue. In youthful ignorance, I fed the koi; purpled grapes

scraping esophagi, intestines clogging until they were too full to swim.

​

I swallowed a stone that summer. The sun reeled its head back to taste the bloodied sky as your

own head lopped from your shoulders—you knelt beside the pool. Black hair fanned across still

water, body bent in prayer / as you clung to dead fish. I hadn’t dreamt of you in years yet

somehow I dreamt of those innocent creatures, their eyes of black glass, and I woke

remembering the stone I swallowed. It sits at the base of my throat, refusing to be pummeled into

digestible grains.

​

After that dream, I couldn’t sleep. Like striking a match in the dark, I saw your face branded

against my eyelids, your voice resonating: you shouldn’t have fed them. We used to braid petals

in each other’s hair in the summers. Do you remember? We were both born in July, tethered by the

sun. We’d spend afternoons beside your koi pool, and I’d thread flowers into your braid, your skin

like warm porcelain as I brushed your cheek. We plucked orange petals from flowers before

realizing how quickly they’d wither. For each taking, there’s loss. It’s common sense, but there

remains a cognitive dissonance; when you took interest in other people, I felt the absence of your

presence. It’s difficult to watch someone grow indifferent. It’s like watching sunlight steer away

from a window / I no longer feel the warmth.

​

It’s been years since I’ve seen you, and at last, I’ve learned I have a knack for thinking I am

closer to people than I really am. When you left, daylight was cold. I dreaded summers knowing

you’d celebrate your birthdays without me. When my birthdays would arrive, I’d realize the

gravity of your absence when I no longer received your messages. I turned sixteen / seventeen /

eighteen without you, and in that long, pervasive silence, there would be others, and with every

loss, the wreckage built in my body until I stopped believing in the sun.

​

/ / /

​

Two years ago, my house in Half Moon Bay burned. I left a lit cigarette on my mattress after

blacking out. An empty Tito’s bottle draped across my ankles, heat splintering the glass and

cutting a jagged line across my shin. Skin festered red for weeks. I watched, in a drunken haze,

the firemen spray water across my house, orange flames circling against the black sky like dead

koi. I thought of you again as the ash settled, dirty snow on my cheeks. The paramedics dressed

my wound, Tito's glass embedded in my skin like tiny, translucent stars. I still feel the alcohol /

inside my wound.

 

Did you know that when you drink in excess too quickly, the alcohol temporarily blocks the

transfer of memories from short-term to long-term storage? Your brain is incapable of making

memories. There are no colors threading images together, rebuilding moments into visceral,

psychological realities; a shadow hangs above your vision, seeps into neurons until you’re

nothing. I filled myself with nothing for a long time, but I loved it / like I loved you.

 

A year after I left home for college, I broke into an apartment complex with a guy I met at a

party. We drunkenly paraded around the community pool at midnight, our cigarette smoke

drifting like fog. The seagreen water glowed against the black, a riveting signal demanding I

jump. I didn’t feel winter’s sharpened teeth, only his hands, my body, seething, the alcohol

warming and erasing the world in milliseconds. He carried me out of the pool as the night sky

scolded me for almost drowning. I must have been drowning. I only remember the fall, the sky,

the towel squeezing my chest. I must have been dying, and I didn’t notice.

 

Sometimes being set on fire is just another means of feeling warm.

 

You said once that when your father was angry, he’d breathe invisible fire, like the jade dragon

that sat in your empty dining room. I never met your father, but I remember the dragon, how its

eyes followed you across the room. Sometimes when I’m walking or watching television or

letting people slip inside me in the dark, I wonder if you can see me. No matter which room I’m

devoured in, which bar I disappear in, you’re watching: warm eyes, a speckle of brown spilling

from one iris and onto the sclera like a stroke of paint breaking its borders. I wonder if you live

in objects, body conforming to omniscient passivity as you witness all of my faults and incessant

desires. What would you think of me? In one part of my mind, you’re a foreboding God passing

judgment / in another, you miss me.

 

When I survived, I wondered if you curled next to me on that burning mattress, the softest

whisper beckoning to rise.

 

/ / /

​

I lived with my parents in Pacifica after the fire. When they met me at the front door, they

nodded curtly and asked how long I’d be staying. I told them not to worry: I wouldn’t be there

for long. I hated Pacifica because the fog congealed the sun. I moved there when I turned sixteen

long after you and I stopped being friends. Since then, I haven’t felt warm.

 

Cramped between the purple walls of my old bedroom, I retreated into silence, stirred the dust

that sat, untouched, for years along my vanity. Draped across my old desk were drafts of

half-hearted poetry, notebooks with sketches of eyes / trees / flowers / your face / scrawled into

the corners like I was ashamed I attempted to remember you.

 

You were the artist between the two of us. I still have the portrait you sketched of me tucked

neatly between a binder of my favorite poems and old journal entries; sometimes I’d run my

fingertips across the faded lead lines imagining your deft hands tracing my image into existence.

I asked once, “Do you think I’m pretty?” You said yes, and I tried suppressing the warmth

fluttering in my chest when the faintest blush painted your cheeks. Your favorite color was

orange. I saw it in the tendrils of light streaming at sunrise / the petals we’d sew into our hair /

the polish I’d coat along your nails / in the soft tone of your voice. Suddenly, it was everywhere.

Your favorite color / became mine, and I wondered if you liked me / the way I liked you.

 

For my thirteenth birthday, you laughed when my grandfather gifted me a rosary and a bottle of

holy water. Maybe it’s a sign, you teased. You’re not being a good girl anymore. Maybe you

were right. When I was ten, my father saw me staring at a woman twice my age for too long on

the TV , noticing how my body would tighten, my breath lodged in my throat whenever a girl

lingered too close. I was afraid to touch you—to hold your hand as your friend—and my parents

knew this.

 

On their knees, my parents prayed to God for me to stop liking girls / start liking boys. They

forced me to attend my First Communion so I could get a taste of what men were really like.

Kneeling against the hardwood in my white dress, I took Jesus into my mouth and wondered if

I’d be different—that to be changed is to fill yourself with men. The first time a man filled me

was when I was eighteen.

 

Drunk and far from home, I sneaked into someone’s house party and met a man five years older

than me. I’m sure there’s people who consider him a nice man. They’ll tell you he’s a hard

worker, a comedian, a man of honor. I will tell you he convinced me violence could be soft. He

held me in the dark, sweet nicotine staining his mouth, and he kissed my head like he loved me;

the same night, I was torn open like an airborne fruit splitting / against my will. Did you know

that the surge of dopamine we get from euphoria is the same one we’re flooded with in fear?