The day I got my blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I found myself flat on my back, crushed under the 6'4", 190-pound frame of my coach, who was also my husband, John. But as I'd already learned, when it came to this 2,000-year-old martial art, being down didn't mean you were out.

Her mother used a foot mask. The package promised that in five days, the skin on her mother’s feet would molt, bubble white, and peel off in shreds, ziiiiiip. The daughter swore her mother’s eventual demise began there.

My cat always sleeps alongside my husband. She slides her white body slack against his belly, her ballet-slipper ears pointed towards his toes. If I catch them napping and she awakens, she smiles by blinking her eyes slowly, her lids hooding bright green marbles.

A man on my flight is named Gabriel; I am Gabriella. As we wait in a Mexico City airport terminal, he tells me that in his dream two nights before he conjured an earthquake. His sister from Oaxaca called to tell him how it rattled the ceiling, shook the glasses to the floor. “These things always happen,” he tells me. “In my dreams, people die, then the next day, it comes true.”

The rumor started as a whisper; a fleeting recollection perfumed by chalk dust. Fourth period, Thursday, March 8, 2001, Holy Redeemer High School. Señor Dwyer’s Spanish verb conjugation, Sr. Paulette’s discussion of early Roman saints.

*Art by Jean-Luc Almond published in New South Journal, Issue 13.2

We know how to take up space. Midwestern essayists can detail vast expanses heavy with dense, river-valley air; recreate the contrasts between time-worn folks in little towns with abandoned main streets and the hubs of Missouri’s flanking cities where downtowns cling to re-birth.

Where my dad lives is a mass of brick row homes crushed together with awnings that were once white but now are gray with dirt. Our block, where we’ve lived since I was in middle school, looks like a mouth with busted teeth cause two houses are boarded up with the windows smashed. But the day he unlocked the front door for the first time, he couldn’t hide his smile.…

Here’s what I miss: Crowds. Big ones. Waiting for the light rail on the Fourth of July and everyone’s sweet with sweat and booze, one mass of hoots and hollers, and you’re reminded of what it’s like to be part of this big world.

I see you over there—long body draped against the bus pole, hands in your pockets, too cool for everything you see. Your eyes catch mine for an instant but we both know the truth: you’d rather be staring at me. And who could blame you? My eyes are honey, my hips warm biscuits, my lips peach slices that could bring you to your knees. I am sin and sweetness, all of it, wrapped into a package that’s just out of reach amid a score of bodies, on a lurching, whirling universe. 

That morning in May was really the only time I can remember Mia taking BeDe out of the basement on Charles Street—that was in the good times, before the forever sleeps and the pill bottles. It was that morning, right after I’d gotten the job as a line cook, that BeDe named where I work—the Green Tile Diner. She’s two and a half and had just gotten old enough to know what things are. I tell you, that girl has got a memory like a donkey; she remembers everything.