Aliento

I.

I’m six, and our dining table is beside our kitchen. I pull out a chair, making sure to grind the bottom of its legs against the linoleum. My mother is cleaning the kitchen sink with a dirty sponge. I hit my elbows softly against the cork board table, cross my arms, and lie my chin into them.

I let out a sigh.

I count internally.

One.

Two.

Three.

Ma continues to wipe.

Another sigh. A few more decibels.

/What is it, Timothy?/

/Nothing./

One more breath in.

And one more out.

II.

In a dream last night, Jeff Goldblum tells you about the edibility of Avocados, that if you were to grow your own, — in a yard much bigger than the one you have now, on a tree of oval leaves, deeply green and veiny, that if you used the right sort of soil, watered adequately but not too much, positioned the tree to allow for just enough of the California sun — then you could eat the Avocados whole, skin and all, save for the pit. He says it with such authority, a finger tapping on the laminated table. There’s a question that precedes all of this, one that this dream does not give you any hint of.

And you take this all as a final sign that you are not depressed anymore.

That you have moved on.

Eating the avocado whole. A new aphorism, maybe.

You wonder, though, if the problem wasn’t that you never knew you couldn’t eat the skin of the Avocado.

Perhaps the problem was, instead, that the skin was all you ever ate, that you were unaware of its insides.

III.

What if a dragon’s fiery breath was actually its mating call?

Splintered cabin wood, charred to black.

/Look at what is burning inside of me./ it calls out.

/Does it also burn inside of you?/

IV.

*August Affirmations*

On your cracking leather couch, you sit across from 7. She is thinner than you remember. Her wrist bone protrudes in a new way.

/Before I start, can I give you a hug?/ you ask her. She nods.

You take a deep breath in. And as you close your eyes, you let it loose.

You took notes to prepare for this but only reference them once. The notes are not to remind you of what you have to say but to remind you not to be diverted.

You won’t know why you’re here for several weeks.

You will realize that it is no longer necessary to carry the weight that you have. You will realize, more so, that you have lived under the false understanding that you /should/ carry weight. And that such weight must be the connective tissue between you and all those you love.

You will no longer crave the attention associated purely with your suffering.

But you will also realize that you cannot write new letters into cement that has already dried.

You compare her love to a shot-put. You describe the sphere. Sixteen pounds. You did the research.

/You fling the thing and see where it lands,/ you tell her. /And wherever it lands is where you put your energy. And I have to wake up each morning, wondering if it’ll land on me./

You argue internally with this wording. /You are not entitled to anyone’s energy,/ you tell yourself.

You are not entitled to anything, except to make decisions about how you want to be loved.

You will not die alone. You will no longer laugh at the idea of dying alone.

V.

Ma teaches me the wrong words to prayers. Or at least she never corrects me.

/Lead us now into temptation,/ I say, the lights off, my hands together.

Lead us now into temptation.

VI.

Start by sitting up.

Make sure to close your eyes.

Some like to begin with the soft hum of a singing bowl.

Take one deep breath in.

And let it out through your nose.

Some might find it comforting to place a finger on their pulse. Either in their neck. Their wrist. Their heart.

Focus there. On that beating.

Let the thoughts come. Trust why they’re there.

Then let them move past you.

Begin.

VII.

*Amazing grace. How sweet the sound. To save a wretch like me.*

/Have you ever actually listened to that song,/ I ask 7. /Isn’t it weird? That there’s a religious song that acknowledges that we are — /

/Shitty people,/ 7 interrupts.

/Exactly./

VIII.

With the lights off, you see three of one hand, translucent limbs and a spotted black. You hover your hand above your wife, her small frame looks frail under cotton bedding. You dream of a river that is not a river, a concrete encasement and a string of cars in the overhang.

A line of water down its center.

The river has no flora. No fauna. But still it is capable of drowning.

You think, what if your mother was supposed to heal this perforation? And what if your mother was merely the village drunk?

La reina de El Sereno. A slurred symphony of lazy affirmations.

Her words connected like sweating bodies embracing to transfer their weight, she would look down to you in the evenings, a gown hung loose like aged skin. /Sleep with the angels, mijo,/ she’d say. /Don’t forget to say your prayers,/ she’d say.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, with vertigo.

And down Huntington Boulevard, where an island of palms towers over your old bakery, beneath the hill in the north where your aunt’s old house is replaced now, you would eat pan and stare at your coffee.

You would think of your brother. That old black and white of him at thirteen, his hand wrapped around a bottle of Seagrams. You saw him on that bed in mesh shorts, you said to your boy, /My brother, my little brother,/ and you thought of that photo.

A half tab of white.

Phencyclidine.

You came to in an alleyway, hands thawing above a newspaper flame. You wonder if your sons will inherit your curls, the soft grays between them, the way that people love you but you prefer isolation, your thin calves, your tolerance.

You wonder how to wash your hands in the puddles of river water collected in the cement banks, when it’ll only dry come morning. You have enough dirt chunked beneath your nails to nourish a bed of orchids of blue and white. You have enough soil to make a new rib all your own.

At least you swear you do.

IX.

/What is it, Timothy?/

/Nothing./

But —

What I mean to say is this: