When You Squeeze a Lemon, Lemon Juice Comes Out Because That’s What’s Inside

By Danielle Ramirez

“Smoke?”

“No, but thanks, but hey, you know, blue and yellow make green?”

“So?” Yuzu lit her second of the night. As she smoked, the fumes expanded its mesmerizing silver-blue wings in a swirl motion. She swayed the wings away with her hand. She didn’t like seeing the fog mar the view of the summer night Tokyo landscape. To observe the scenery, she stood from the top of the residential hill with a coworker.

“Look at you,” a woman pointed at Yuzu who leaned herself against the streetlight.

Yuzu crossed her exposed legs together. She wore a bucket jean skirt. Her folded arms suffocate her boobs together. Bra slipped in and out of the yellow spaghetti top. Gentle aquamarine light shone above her with its shape like a perfect Hershey’s Kiss. Yuzu glanced over at the woman silently before flicking the butt of the cigarette with her thumb.

“Corny,” Yuzu replied before taking a drag of the smoke.

“You’re sour, like green.”

The smoker’s posture became rigid. She didn’t look her in the eye. She stared downward, instead.

“Yuzu, right? We haven’t properly introduced ourselves, but hello–”

“Not now. Not on my smoke break.”

“I’m sorry–?”

Yuzu pushed her weight off the streetlight, dropping the stick on the ground, “You think you can come up to me when I puff–” she grinded it on the ground with her foot, “–And start talking to me? Huh? You can’t read the air?” She clicked her tongue with a snark,

“Go fuck yourself.”

Heels clack and drag across the asphalt, leaving the woman stunned. On the ground, the crushed cigarette lit up its last smoke, twirling up skywards.

• • •

Chair croaked, Yuzu sat. The table tilted, Yuzu stopped. A Seven Stars cigarette box crashed across the table, Yuzu smoked. She’s on her own veranda of her dead apartment, with the smell of rotting plants or family portraits hung up down the hall. (They all always include her relatives and a brunette man, and yet, she never appeared in any of them.) All of those things from the inside never seemed to faze her.

Instead, everything from the outside bothered her. Yuzu can’t even enjoy the pretty skyscrapers from afar. All she can see is a shitty, thin street with packs of white trash stacked in front of everybody’s homes. Nobody from engineering had ever dared to drift off the course when designing buildings. It was evident. The homes along the street weren’t appealing; they were the same. Same 13 floors with the same windows, stairs, verandas, and interior design. What’s worse was that she lived on the third floor, closest to the ground. She could hear and watch the map of flies’ flickering routes above the trash.

• •

•

The streetlights emit sour, teal lights that burned her retinas off without her consent.

“What’s everyone’s fucking problem?” An orange light glowed at the cigarette tip, “Over and over…”

She exalted the smoke through her mouth before taking another hit. No more talking, only relaxing. Casually, in her free hand, she shone her phone screen before her face:

23:31

[ No Notifications ]

Under the large time display, there appeared the happy background of a brunette man squishing his face alongside a black-haired woman. It’s Yuzu herself, finally. They both smiled while they clinked their creamy sundae glasses together with their wedding rings. She ruminates over the photo with the same details she spotted like it’s an ‘I Spy with my Little Eye,’ for the first time.

Yuzu ripped the phone screen out of her face with an annoyed sigh. The same orange dot glowed again.

She wondered if his boss ripped him a new one for not meeting the deadline for today’s work. She wondered when her husband would ever arrive at the house. She wondered if he ever loved her.

The hazy fumes of the smoke fogged up the view of the street. Soon enough, it sent Yuzu down memory lane.

In a spring Yokohama Chinatown, lanterns danced and dazzled reds and golds like fireworks. Streets packed with people like a busy school of fish under the sea, rushing in two opposite directions; Entry and exit. Yuzu and her friend swam towards the exit.

“Yuuuuzuuu!” Lime spread a smirk, like a ripple in a pond. She pressed her arm against Yuzu’s. She held something in her hands.

“What are you trying to do?”

Lime ripped the plastic open, pu- lling out the fortune cookie. She slipped out a snicker as they drew nearer to the exit, right onto the night navy blue street.

“This is going to be you, Yuzu,” she held up the snack, “With somebody, not your husband.” She cracked the fortune cookie like an egg. A white piece of paper slips out in between the legs of the cookie. “Take the paper.”

Yuzu didn’t appreciate the sexual innuendo, but she plucked it out anyway. “Now, what does that say?”

Psst! They’re being paid to love you.

Yuzu flipped the paper to the backside:

Learn Chinese: Disease 病 (bìng) Blinking a couple of times, Yuzu slipped out of the memory fog. Flicking the hair away from her fingers, she grabbed the cigarette box. Squinting at the flies whose motions have stopped, she pressed the lighter against the butt of a new cigarette.

Then, she lit another, then another. Soon, the table is chalked black with dead smoke sticks.

23:59

[ No Notifications ]

Yuzu wore a tilde with her lips before she felt a soft brush in her mouth as she puffed out the smoke. With her long nails, she extracted something off her face. She lifted her hand up, flashing it under the vague light. A curly blonde pubic hair.

0:00

De Vaina!

By Danielle Ramirez

I hear waves crashing in the ocean. Rolling down the window of the car, my hair danced with the blowing air. The fragrance of briny salt filled my nose from afar.

I saw this scenery;

Seagulls flocked, seaweed crawled, sea urchins buried across the sea.

Vendors walked along the beach, With thousands of colorful inflatable animal rafts in their arms. They shout, “Ey, ¿quiere una balsaaaa? Dos para veinte pesos!”

With my toes dipped in sand, I stood under the scorching sun. I watched little cousins bounce And splashing at each other with turquoise water.

They cupped their mouths and scream, “Marco!”

“Polo!”

I backed out into the shade. I leaned back on the gritty, bent palm tree. Not even a cold, juicy coconut brings my thoughts back.

Slapping my skin, hard.

Peering over my hand, Yuck.

Bugs turned into a splat.

“Tienes ese vaina?” I asked a vendor, With my slain hand raised. Bug repellent spray, I want.

“Ah, nooo pero—”

He flashed me a blue sparkly unicorn raft at me, “¿Quiere ese balsa, no?”

Clicking my tongue, I shook my head. I thanked him, though. After, cretins marked my legs as their home with red.

Before I knew, the ocean swallowed the scorching sun whole. Now, it’s dark, still hot.

No matter where I go, I hear the bachata, mosquitoes, and dominoes. They were rejoicing together.

Noticing the glow in the dark, I lifted my chin up to see.

Bathed in the sunlight, the moon graced The sky with the puffs of white magic.

I shut my eyes.

I’m at home.

Ode To the Victim

By Marian Ubanede

I never thought that I would be so scared walking through my neighborhood. That my heart would be pounding and praying to live another day. That those familiar buildings and faces would become violent. That someone reaching into their car or back pockets will make me stop, my knees quaking with fear.

That I, who casually walked those streets at night, would run in the day. That the muzzle of a gun and the sound of a bullet would be far away yet so close.

Child, teen, adult, none safe from the raging chaos

The men in blue, who are meant to protect you, see you as an oppressor

The victims who turn to them become persecuted because of the color of their skin

We fall by our hand and by the hands of those who wish to silence us

Until the days when we are seen

When the guns are put down

When the color of one’s skin doesn’t determine the measure of justice

The victim will keep living in fear

The ever-increasing cries of loved ones will never stop

The memories of one single day plaguing their life

And I would keep running from a place I once called my home