i covered each side of my face, one hand on either cheek. It could’ve looked like I was covering my ears. But it was more of a shielding than anything else. It’s the hands on each side of your face that are holding you in, not up (like elbows or skyscrapers would).

like the mouth of a river that splits one, two, or seven different ways; that’s how the tears looked. but they were heavy. they weren’t the kind you knew from laughing too hard or watching a great movie. they were heavy like hot irons burning each piece of my face they teached. my eyes were shut. but even shut, they couldn’t hold back what was bubbling over like a too-full coffee cup ran through the restaurant—it spills. and everyone knows it will. but the server still tries, just to see if maybe this time they can make it. no mess to clean up on some pompous customer’s dry-cleaned moth-eaten shirt from the eighties.

with silence in the car that’s how the tears came. brother on my left, grandma on my right. we were heading to a wedding. and these grand events seem to cause more pain than pleasure in the build up; i can’t wear this, you can’t wear that, hurry up, get out the door, work is calling, just give me a second, work is calling, but the plan was to leave an hour ago, but work is calling.

just give me a second.

so the stony silence is well-known and almost expected at this point. weddings were war we waged with weapons whistling where dresses and high-heels broke our backs and ankles. crack, slip, crack.

i had learned the art of crying silently at a young age. night terrors were my downfall, though. i could never control them because i was always asleep when they happened.

but in daylight, when my mind was conscious of appropriate reactions and reasoning, i knew how to cry silently. i had a black belt in this sort of thing.

i had gotten mad at abuela. my grandma. she was talking in spanish about the traffic, which i already knew my dad was aware of, angrily, and my mom was aware of my dad who was taking calls from work; she was angry too. i tried to “shh” her but she took offense. i probably would too.

i am a woman, not a child. i am not your little cousin. you can’t “shh” me like that. (she said something like that in spanish and turned away from me). i took my hand from her leg where it had been resting, trying to communicate thousands of messages of love and life to her, an aging, lonely woman that i loved with so much of myself.

even though i “shh”-ed her sometimes, and got angry.

she turned away and i took my hand away. i shoved the earphones in my ears, hoping to plug out the noise of boiling emotion that came from so many directions in the small car. too many things. too many problems.

i put one hand over each side of my face. picture someone showing the idea of “tunnel-vision”; or a mime holding the sides of their face as they mimick an invisible box that their head is stuck in. i closed my eyes and let the music sink past the clogged mud in my body as best it could.

the tears spilled over like sloshed beer. they came up out of nowhere. my eyelids were “lids”, sure, but they weren’t made to hold in these sorts of things. tears or sight.

i did not worry about my father up front seeing them fall. i made no sound, and he was busy talking with tim or john or patrick from work. or he was busy being silent. the rearview mirror was just another place to avoid looking. and my mother. oh she would not look back. she and i had fought about something leading up to the fiasco of this wedding party.

i did not worry about someone seeing the front of me, so i covered the sides. no one ever looked in the front. too obvious. nothing’s hiding there. so i covered the sides.

after a few songs, it would end. bathos. nothing big, tragic. just a few songs. no one’s looking. just a few songs. that’s how it happens. nothing big, tragic. bathos.

and the tears stopped. my throat was not tight, no sob was escaping my stomach. the tears stopped, because they have to. it was simple enough. just the way things worked.

i dabbed at my eyes, wiping the insides of a particular pupil, but not all at once. no. if i did it all at once, the visitors in the car would take notice. i would not want to bother them with catching up. too late now. all better now.

so i dabbed the insides every few minutes. wiped my cheeks nonchalantly. as if a bug had been on them, or a stray piece of feather. not a tear. i did not act as if a tear had traveled that road. that’s the trick isn’t it?

it’s how you break down that makes all the difference. i’ve learned to do it silently.

my brother did not look over, perhaps out of privacy he wanted to give me (for i think he knows more than he lets on), and my grandma was still looking out the window, more silent now than she had been before.

i turn the music up for ten minutes. i look around the car and watch Guilt take a seat on my lap, quite inappropriately. why did i fight with my mother? she had problems enough with my father. why didn’t i fight with my father? he had problems enough with my mother. why did i fight with my grandmother? she was old and fragile; she was dying. we were all dying. how could i have been so selfish. why so prideful.

i put the other half of the earphone in my grandma’s ear. the song is in spanish and we have listened to it before, together. she doesn’t remember that we have but she smiles. she forgives quickly, but i wonder if she cries because of things i’ve said. i worry even though i’m sure it’s not all baseless (the things i get frustrated with).

we get to the wedding. we are not late. thank God.

there are my brother and sister; their wife and husband standing next to them. we stand together. i apologize to my mother. my grandmother is talking her native language with friends from the island she’d left behind many years ago. the mother and father she left. they died. the brothers and sisters she left. most were dead. the island she left. it had been dead since he took over.

my sister is wearing a pretty red dress, and my brother-in-law looks handsome at her side. they are beautiful. they have been marrried just over one year.

my brother has a serious face but laughs with a silly soul; we know he is a funny boy. he’s just worried about life i think. my sister in law is next to him. her belly is big now. i haven’t seen it in a few weeks—being away at school is hard sometimes. just 45 minutes of highway can make a freeway of difference in the shapes people change from and into while you’re gone. it’s hard sometimes.

but we are smiling, genuinely. we are laughing. this is how it is supposed to be. we are a family. dad doesn’t call the office. he doesn’t answer the phone. he just smiles. grandma is still talking to the crazy-island friends who talk loud and make large gestures like elephants or trapieze artists. we are laughing. my little brother complains that he had to wear a tie; says of course he looks better than most of the people here, he can’t help it. we laugh.

this is how it is supposed to be. we are a family.

we get into the car and prepare for the ride home. brother and sister-in-law left a few minutes before; her legs were swelling. Apparently these things happen to pregnant women.

i will be an aunt in a few weeks. i will be an aunt. this is happier than the time when i thought i would, when they thought they would…and then things turned ugly. sometimes life turns ugly.

but they left a few minutes before we did. she needs her rest. she makes a beautiful pregnant woman. bright eyes, petite frame and face—so the belly comes as a surprise when you see it, so my mom says. she could be on those pregnancy magazines. she is beautiful. and my brother is protective. he is aware of the ugly things.

my sister and her husband walked out with us, but we drove separately. they say goodbye. my sister says i look really pretty, and i thank her. it means more than a “thank you” can say, and she won’t ever know how deep her words sink. deeper than the music, i think. my brother in law says goodbye. he is a good man. his father has just passed away. he was a good man.

so many good men in the world. and my brother is protective. we can’t ignore those ugly things.

we get into the car and drive away. the bride and her groom are outside taking pictures by a classic car; she danced in my quinceniera. i liked her. we haven’t spoken for years; now she is married.

the highway is different on the way home. no heat, no traffic like the four oclock rush that didn’t rush at all, on our way here. my dad was swerving a little too much. i watched the road for him. how much wine did he have?

my hand is on my grandma’s leg again, resting. she is moving her hand over my arm—she knows how much i like it. i do not put in my earphones. nothing to plug this time. nothing to drown.

i am not crying; there are no tears. my grandma continues the motion till we reach her home. it is a nice place for people over a certain age (not a nursing home), and there are events if she ever wanted to attend one. but she didn’t. she was old. she was too old for that, she said. too old for what? companionship? i shudder when i think of that. no one is ever too old for that. she moved here to get away from my uncle who is a drug addict. he is also my little brother’s father.

my little brother, technically, is my cousin. his mother and father were not able to care for him, so my mother and father did.

he is my brother.  

i walk her to her door and make sure she gets in safe (she wore a form of older women’s high heels and she has been limping, slightly). her dog is waiting for us, barking.

how did she get out? silly dog she is a smart one. she says this all in spanish. i kiss her goodnight and run back to the car. the air outside is cold and foggy.

we are home. the front door opens, my dog is waiting, outside. he is my friend in ways that people can never satisfy. it is an odd thing to consider. but he is my friend.

my mother says goodnight and i am happy we are okay, not fighting anymore.

my father and i are left in the kitchen. i feel the need to say it. i feel the need but i’m scared. i told God i would do it if he gave me the chance. here it was. moments passed. he poured his cereal into a styrafoam cup and began to eat it. (it is a pretty insteresting ritual he has, the way he eats his cereal). 

i looked at my dog outside and wondered why i didn’t take more risks. the world was ending. we were dying. why not?

so i phrased it nonchalantly as if i didnt care. as if it didn’t mean anything more than what i said;

do you think God is bigger than your stress?

what?

do you think God is bigger than your stress? at work i mean.

of course.

i look back outside at my dog, pretending it was a random question. i hoped he would see through it. i hoped he would wonder why i asked. i hoped he would change.

i even prayed for it. i rarely prayed for my dad. i don’t know why, i just don’t.

but i did this time.

so i walked out of the kitchen and went to my room. he said goodnight and something about running in the morning. maybe he took something. maybe he listened to something i didn’t really say. maybe he’s thinking about it. i sat in bed, and put the covers over my body. my cocoon.

after all i needed to run in the morning; be a butterfly.

i said goodnight and turned off the light.

© Lauren I. Sotolongo

You never know when your “big” moments are happening. It’s not until later that day, year, or decade, when you realize that minute in time when your life completely changed. Those scenes in a movie when the music is playing and the audience holds it’s breath? You don’t recognize the music playing in real life until you rewind it back in your head, taking time to hear the violin, guitar, and bass drum moving softly in the background of that moment when, without you knowing, the plot starts to thicken. 

l.i.s.

you cheered me

Up like a helium

balloon or a pixar

movie where someone

still dies and needles

still pierce whats left

of rising happiness; and

that’s the problem

with emotion—it’s the

lack of constant in it’s

ever-ebbing tides of

swinging weights and moods

which in the end

recede like an aging man’s

hairline; the only

“constants” are changing

constraints, like a few

dozen ribbons tied to a

few dozen birthday balloons

of green, blue, yellow, red

right and bright on a setting

sun’s horizon-lined paper; rising

air, balloons with an old man and a

young boy searching for contented

constants in a world robbing

all of the good in constructive

content; believing in

entitlement with our chests

held high by the push of

their stares, like a school-yard

shoving where fists aren’t the

point. you’ve got to be

Up on more than balloons

and stares, and you’ve got

to be searching for a high

beyond yeast-less oxygen, unleavened

bread in our lungs; run with scissors Up

ten flights of stairs and

you’ll start to see the

point in living for more

than emotional shooting up, snorting

up your airways only toxins

made of scared things like

acceptance, love, or a lack of

ego-stroking-care;

you wake Up in the morning

resurrected from the “constants”

stepping out into the bitter,

sweet, beautiful air

realizing that life isn’t

constant but bitter, sweet, and

beautifully-prepared, and you step

out blessed by this constant, in this

second—that somehow, someway,

you’ve made it somewhere.

© Lauren I. Sotolongo

she called me “baby”

again and i wished she hadn’t; the

way it spilled from her mouth is the

way that vomit leaves a sickened

body; it was sad, pathetic, knowing

all too well that the tone in the

substance spewed was disgusting

in that it declared how little i felt, how

sad my tears looked to the

aged-maker of my

bones; me, made like

cookie dough or

brownie mix from

the market—somewhat from “scratch”

but with directions to follow too. the way

she said it told me she knew i

was hurting, she knew i was

a dam broken in convenient

places to let the powerful

electric-water run through; i was

spewing things too, though i wouldn’t

say how or why i do things that look

so ugly in water-spotted mirrors

or eyes. she says “i know baby” and i

cry more because she does not have

any hint or card or clue to tell her the depth

of my ambivalence grown like a corn stalk

or nailed-cross-tree-trunk planted from

a nice bruise or two, watered regularly

with sin-ister ambiguity in a faithful

following. she says “i know baby”, but she

doesn’t know at all how i, unlike any other

(and especially her), understand my

insanely sanctifying struggle to spook like a

ghost away the thoughts that knife each other

in a war-scene battle; camouflage amo and i

know that this movie will end with a fairytale twist

making no sense like a widely-accepted Disney

sequence of events, and that will frustrate me to

pieces. of anger and regret. why the warring

thoughts can’t just white-flag a strain of the virally-

infected enemy so that the voices in my head

stop threatening the people in my bed, those stroking my

hair, whispering in my ear, cradling arms and legs

that only lower the problem deeper into

this skin-fold grave. i straighten my frame as i tell her

to leave. i straighten my frame making sure to

kiss both her and my father

before i walk through the front door, making sure they

know that it is i who is lost, it is i who is wrong and

woefully aware, though i fight to say otherwise. i make

sure to kiss them both, knowing that if this was

the last time their cheeks rubbed mine—like matches

against sandpaper-resistance sparking—if this

was the last time i ever would see them, should

flame, or water, or wind, or Heaven kill

me, i make sure they know

that i love them. even insanity can’t

change that.

© Lauren I. Sotolongo

short things catch our

attention like a

punch or a

bomb

even when

long things catch our

breath like a

net or a

hand.

both things catch our

affection like a

puppy or a

poem,

while no things catch our

hunger like a

sandwich or a

whisper.

© Lauren I. Sotolongo

you’re not allowed to step away

back-up turn-over leave-running like

your face is on fire from the latest hot mess

you’ve made of the latest hot trend that is a new

friend that better fits the style of fast fashion at the

end of this walkway where i strike a pose and watch

as you take notes noting my slumped shoulders, thin

skin decorated with sticks popping out of each corner like

a porcupine cause what you want is “skin-ny” not the skin that is

me or her or the girl we used to be; no what you want is a watered-down

portrait pasted on a postage stamp too small to hold it’s significance

and translate it’s declaration originally declared some decades ago

in a golden age when art could laugh. you take notes and

whisper to your colleague beside

you, asking, not discreetly enough, “is there anyone better than this bag of

bones? i need meat.”

so i leave after you’ve fitted me in clothes too small

even for my paper-machete curves, crinkling and molding to what you

need.

so i leave as the next girl comes in, three sizes smaller than i, soon

fitted with clothes too tight and unforgiving against the bones she too

has broken.

so i leave and turn the corner, looking for the nearest pizza

shop, wondering when the last bathroom stall or agent will

ask me to throw up all of my

self, leaving buckets of brown-orange self-neglect

in the porcelain toilet where i left last nights dinner and last weeks

marriage.

so i leave and come back in the morning; you are still taking

notes, and i am eating cold pizza.

© Lauren I. Sotolongo

my mother just asked if her

daughter with the bright eyes was

thinking bad thoughts at that bad

time when her little girl sought a

counselor so badly cause she was feeling

sort of lonely. i didn’t have the heart to

tell her that all of us have bad thoughts and

all of us want to escape them somehow; the

creative ones think of drama and

theatrics which i, a creative one, did too like the

rest of my creative friends. she wouldn’t ask if

i was contemplating suicide or cutting or

things that asked for too much vulnerability and

touched too closely to the place of sensitively-breathing

short-comings; she wouldn’t say those words but i

said “no” anyways. i said “no” because my mother shouldn’t

bear my problems and my mother shouldn’t worry about

things like getting me “serious help” when my serious

help is—every day—just learning the small steps

i need to stumble through to get past these serious hells; she talked

of moving home if that was the case, and implied that dark

thoughts called for dark circumstances (though she didn’t say

it) like pills or psychiatrists; she talked without knowing that

every word she said was wrong, though she didn’t mean it to

be. she talked without understanding that everyone hurts

badly enough at times to wish for something different. and this

doesn’t mean that joy isn’t there; it doesn’t mean that sorrow

is my only friend; it doesn’t mean that all my friends bring

me sorrow; it means that life get’s dark enough sometimes

for the few who think too deeply or the many who avoid so

quickly to make even the most optimistic feelings seem far

off and drowning in a squall or storm or sea. the ones with

the brightest smiles find that bright light from things like darkness

or hurt so big they had to bleed at some point; find that

smirk that shrugs struggles softly off

carefree bones from the un-funny parts of life; find that joy in

giving to others because they know when they needed it

no one gave to them; they are the ones with love that oozes from

pores and fingernails, knowing how important

love is because they have lost it to a thief’s spastic

hand or emotion. we all feel pain;

question all the

bright smiles who probably brightly filed into

darkened rooms as a child defiled by some

adult’s idea of worldly reconcilement. we all

feel pain i wanted to tell my mother, even the bright-eyes

and especially the brightly-painted sighs or eagerly

stretching hands; i wanted to tell her.

but even then, even after i said “no”

the empty space between my phone-speaker and hers

was filled with daunting words that took up too much

space for mothers to understand or handle adequately, draining

oil into ocean, calmly. i laugh on my side of the line, knowing she

is cringing on the other, knowing somewhere where her subconscious

speaks that her

daughter and everyone else on the planet feels like

dying sometimes. my mother shouldn’t worry about things like

that.

the kind of work and words that continually work

wonders are those that you find under the

sheets where you hid as a child making

forts to box in what you could and stuffing

your face in pillows to feel what was soft and

clean unlike you’re own fiends; stifling breaths

and the heaving intake of oxygen-death is where

most youth find freedom instead

of in “serious help” which can be

serious hell for some. be smart,

be caring, be present parent—

sometimes that is enough to

understand where the line

that you shouldn’t cross is and where the wall

that you should burn down is. for me and

my other creative friends its simpler than

psychiatric detainment—sometimes;

shake it off kid, that’s what i say over and over; shake it off

quick because you can’t move forward if you’re constantly

bending over to see what you failed to cling to

in the years when you were too young

to cry the right tune or harmony for

the world to stand at attention and call

for ovations realizing their radio stations

caught static from generation to

generation; tweak the antenna

and perk up your ears—your

kids are screaming for

things that white

noise won’t withstand, if you listen closely.

© Lauren I. Sotolongo

bruises how

i wait for them eagerly to

splash like the night’s smile

enfused with the torture of a sunset’s breakdown

in purple and in red and orange like

deeply-rotting fruit

against the pale, dry skin of my

knuckles.

resembling a morning birthed in overcast

ambiguity, so the ambiguous

dropping and replacing of space once shared,

now entrusted to the smiling, bright

eyes of another

(more worthy)

that can hold much more steadily

what my bruised hands and

fingers only

drop.

the canvas of my purple, stretching skin finally

gives—like a patron saint—a picture

to the world

of a battle inside

that will always

be lost.

© Lauren I. Sotolongo

you want to know why I carry a knife in my pocket?

why the collection in my room stacks high

like prized trophies or battle-scars?

you want to know where the blade ends and my

self-esteem carries on, cutting those I hold close

only to drive deeper into bones what knives and

blades fail to penetrate?

.

the nature of insanity relies on one’s understanding

of reality; mine is based upon the thought of

Another—any

other, really. Any other person except my

self. so,

.

i lie down on your bed covered in roses sweet with

sour milk lining the edges of thorns that pierce

skin, allowing the white poison curdling

to sink into the hole where oxygen and blood

move like trees and wind; back and forth

like the blade of a

murderer shoving low self-esteem

and high disregard

deeper into one Other’s heart, till

the sheets are painted red

.

i carry a knife in my pocket so that

when i see you come around, i can hold

onto a reality (this totem of sorts)—knowing the

weight of its steel, the curves of its

shining acceptance—and understand

assuredly that my self-hatred is still alive

and hungry for the taste of wounded-air

crushing All (you and i the most)

outside my pocket.

.

© Lauren I. Sotolongo

I wasn’t crazy when I started. I swear.

I was a normal teenager with a brain the size of an average, high-strung ego.

The way it did start, was with a young girl. She was beautiful with light brown hair, carribbean sea-drenched eyes, and light brown skin. I remember thinking that she was special. Something about her glowed and expanded beyond her small limbs and smaller teeth, beyond her underdeveloped body, swinging about slightly more eloquently than my own.

I was fascinated by the beauty of a tiny human being the same size and stature as myself, but somehow more vibrant.

That was first grade.

I grew up in a stable home with a stable mother who left my stable father for a stable lover. He was screwing a stable mistress too, though. The stable foundation of this childhood was set upon a fault line—I cracked and shook. Organs fell like swaying buildings in Japan. My stomach would quake for normal things like cookies and milk, but my mind could not. The distance between my head and hips separated child-like needs from philosophical wanderings.

That was sixth grade.

My knitted sweaters lasted till middle-school graduation. My persona of keeping-it-together was fraying. Quickly. I understood I had issues. That stable foundation had cement covering a corpse of understanding that, I had issues. But I moved on. Moved forward.

Tenth grade.

I had a high g.p.a. and a low self-esteem. But it was still there—that stability cemented in my heart. I had to be—I was, I am—strong. Appearance is everything. Funny, comfortable, not broken. The surface of tsunami-driven currents.

High school graduation.

It’s over. The deserted street is comforting with my cap and gown flying like a cape and mask in the Arizona wind. Until it starts to hail.

My head is bruising with bumps popping out like whack-a-moles. My cap is buckling against the pressure; my body against the weather. My phone has been stolen; my wallet has pictures of strangers; my barefeet are beginning to bleed.

I look toward a hazy neon sign in the distance. I look back toward the far-away town I’d abandoned. My friends were gone, my schooling had finished, and the sharp taste of whiskey still lined my inner cheeks.

I looked toward the sky shooting bullets at my face. Now what?

© Lauren I. Sotolongo