Adanari Alatorre- Gonzalez - Chikhai Bardo

Table Of Contents

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5

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7

Waiting For An Invitation

9

It's Always Been You

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13

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17

Chikai Bardo

19

Agua Viva Clouds storm over my field of dreams They part to touch me, cold With rain I run, fast, carelessly no mother to warn me of unearthed roots that rejoice under my childish feet. I fall hard enough to separate an apple’s flesh from core.

Wind cries out to me tells me of its wounds rips in the sky ribbons of my blood are needed to sew it together.

The tree of life has disappeared and with it my muse.

My hand takes the skies I weave my blood across the grey depth.

Tears are no good here only rain can fall and be called life saving.

Eventually my veins will run dry and the rain will not save me.

5

6

One Stop Away I think we should have gone to the beach before you left but the earth decided to rotate and warm up and coordinate without us

before then, I can't believe we got to do everything we did at the beach at the train stations at homes and hallways of the city that were so empty they could have been ours like taping pieces of a picture together I think about how the last train eternalized us, our gusto on the platforms where I now stand to get blown away by the light rail that carried you away from me, farther and farther But maybe the train knows that if I saw the flash of red it would sear its ninety degree angles into my chest and pull me on like a magnet stuck to the sides of a train with no destination, just an endless loop

7

of suspension I'd be forced to live on the torso of the red line like a band of rust awaiting its bacterial destiny maybe it’s me maybe I'm meant to ferment like beer sour and cold and striking at the back of your throat but on the inside I will never stop sweating away my desire for old age with you I am alive you are alive we are not on the same platform I can't step off this infinite interlude

8

It's Always Been You Time is painful. I'm inclined to say I've always known this but I never have. I've always thought time was an uncomfortable concept. Used to claim my life in a timeline of diachronic events..

I'm sad, the sadness that makes me empathize with a one limbed pigeon. Hobbling and flying but naturally slow. I am not limbless and I don't have wings but I smell on occasion and I hobble when my hips hurt.

Sometimes I hope you walk through that door like a timeless scene from a movie. You're drenched in rain and have a look on your face, desperate and romantic. I'm in the kitchen mindlessly stirring something on the stove when I turn around and you're standing under the arch of my doorway, empty handed. I stop stirring. Time stands still. You're steps away from me, but I can't touch you or hear you. I'm trapped in the middle looking at us standing still in this liminal moment, this humiliating dream of waiting for you. Like it's my purpose.

Time is painful because sometimes I just fall asleep and I don't think or feel anything.. My body retires and every cell in my body lies dormant. Sometimes I feel the warmth of your shoulder beside mine in the night.

The doors are closed at an appropriate time and my stomach is full. I sleep for hours breathing in a consistent pattern, limbs spread out owning every inch of my bed.

For hours, time is not painful.

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10

Waiting For an Invitation If I were to write you a letter would you pick it up? or toss it on a pile of mail the way hoarders do? would you save it for a special moment far from the present? would you read my name swallow a deep breath and wait for an invitation to open it?

I am inviting you now to this life that you haunt, you are inclined to accept or decline your role. but, maybe we don't want to chase what's meant to be knowing that if we run the wind will trip us and let one catch up to the other.

I haven't sent the letters, I doubt I ever will.

I'm holding on to paper the way I held on to your hand eventually the paper will be enough for me, and there will be no invitation to accept or decline. …

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12

Dear, I get really scared of walking by myself and sitting by myself, and eating by myself.

You don't let me eat alone.

I never ask you to leave, I will never ask you to leave.

I ask you to finish your food, walk one more block, take a couple more deep breaths in this seat lean against the wall with me be unapologetic about your dedication.

I wish you were here to read this. That way I could finally just let these things go and let our fire grow as big as possible and hush into sparks of contained flame. the tides aren't the same anymore, they barely resemble your face.

Your eyes aren't beyond the shore anymore, they're farther than I can swim and you know that.

You can swim and you're still out there.

I can't see you anymore besides an occasional splash of water that ripples back to me, at the shore where I walk in case you swim back and need me to wipe the water off your face.

I'm scared of being the funny one because I can't laugh at my own jokes anymore. I hate retelling your jokes, they fall flat in your absence, and I'm the only one that laughs. I don't tell your jokes to anyone but myself. I'm indifferent to other peoples' laughs because they're not yours and they don't joke back at me, I can't laugh anymore. I forgot that I wasn't just losing you I was losing our haven of humor. I forgot I was losing the only person to turn my laughter, wild with breath into incapacitating giggles. The way you laughed so hard when I embarrassed myself. I wish I could hear you laugh at me one more time. Only I would know you're laughing and only I would know why.

Earnestly and lovingly, Yours

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14

My Fear of Water Shores speak to me through the oceans whistlings of mist, they make me uncomfortable Sand trails between my lopsided walk to the bus, pooling at my ankles and chaffing my thighs Seashells cracking open, splitting unevenly presenting themselves as wholes beneath malleable sand My feet meeting open air, meeting thousands of years, decomposed at my soles Shore whispers: “Come touch me, here.”

I whisper: "You're not the waves of my tide.”

My ears brightly sticking out of my head, eager for my tides return My tide’s mist hugs the dry spots on my face and kisses below my ears My ears love my tide The wind walks behind me and up my legs until the wind reaches the slope of my lower back, stepping hard Wind straightens my back, humiliates me Walks past me My nose bright like a sick cartoon inhales with pace to summon my tide My throat hardens to swallow the smell With difficulty I maintain posture With great pain I step on jagged seashells, deceiving their softness With unaccounted ounces rushing out of my eyes I walk towards my tide Tide says: “Touch me, here.”

I say: “Touch me, here.”

Tide cannot touch me without ripping currents I cannot touch tide without drowning

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16

4 Weeks and 2 Months Ago I take our dog to the vet and hold him and affirm his pain when his eyes shoot at me while the syringe plunges into his hind leg I cup his face until the pain is over I pet behind his ears, kiss his cheek and he shakes out all of the fear then you pick up the dog and I see you're both so alone and overwhelmed by the sidewalk foot traffic he only smelled you a handful of times, never bit never grinned malevolently he believed you would stay he didn't have to adjust to your skin the way every dog does. you're crumbling the skin off of your fingers like mazapan, leaving trails of collagen everywhere I am nauseous with each pump of pain in the thumb you bit too hard soon I'll be peeling the skin off of my thumb marking the trail to my home in the hopes you're behind me piecing together a mazapan, delicatelyit's rare to piece one whole To come inside my house and lay in my bed below sinking ceilings the dog and I fight for the place where you rested your head I flip the pillow concave with your smell

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and save it for myself sacred to me just for tonight tomorrow you'll be gone and the ceiling will collapse

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Chikhai Bardo I've discovered new territory to my cuticles finding satisfaction in the veil of blood that drifts over my new wound so shortly after my teeth skins my finger No worriment dear sister, I am practicing for the day the precision of my gully will be the last strike of a match before death I denounce this need: I was warned of how viperous this hunger becomes papillae pulse and push against the roof of my mouth glands spill over and lunge for recuperating corpuscles once scab forms I will have three days before another verboten fruit can slip between my teeth that is to say: I am eating away at myself I am my own illness I turn the other half bitten concave cheek when someone notices my fingers in my mouth there is a liquiscent substance separating my consciousness the solvent isn't lustrous like oil or reflective like water there are two dimensional colors pooling at our feet I struggle to meet her ashing eyes, she’s up to her wrists in this, it. sickness seeps out of my chest moisture sears my damaged lips I am beside myself shoulder to shoulder

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the girl in the mirror is a willing host, for a viral plague she is tender skin and outlined clairvoyance she is strictly cemented to subcutaneous wisdom centered beneath my esurience I persuade myself into a lullaby: I am a normal girl with normal pains I am not the only animus to board these trains

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Agua Viva

One Stop Away

Its Always Been You

Waiting for an Invitation

My Fear of Water

Four Weeks and Two Months Ago

Poems and illustrations by Adanari Alatorre Cover image by David Choe