Guillermo and I sit on orange crates
outside his trailer and he hits my head
when the yellow ladybugs fly in.

Lo siento, he says, más y más.
I think this means his little sister
is still in Buenos Aires. Her name

is Branca and she's a contortionist
and I think he sends her money because
she's still waiting for her big break

with a foreign circus. Sometimes
Guillermo and I, we chase butterflies
through the high grass and wildflowers

out behind the factory and I tell him
how to say smokestack and he says,
¿Cómo?, and I say, Je ne sais pas,

qu'est-ce que tu veux faire?, but
all he wants to do is pull my hair,
and so I cry, and then he stops and

says, ¿Qué pasa?, and I miss Algeria,
you don't know what it's like, but
he says he does know what it's like

because he will never see his sister again
until the circus she isn't in yet goes on tour
and he buys a ticket and meets her

at the stage door with the kind of rare,
beautiful flowers that only grow
in the place they call their backyard,

which probably isn't even a backyard,
but more of a small balcony off
their apartment in the busiest part

of the city. I think this is what
he means. I think he means he
should have brought her with him.

Voila, I say, le ciel, instead of anything
about how he should stop being sad
because it will never happen anyway.

Then, we go to work in the middle
of the night and I think of the wind,
the hot, sand laden wind off the sea.


 

THE FORBIDDEN CHAMBER

What would you do if your parents left you
alone and never came back? Would you
open the door that says DON'T OPEN?
I would, too. There are things you do
when left alone you wouldn't
otherwise do, like leave the house
without your phone or marry someone
you'll wish would leave you later, or
throw a party like in that famous movie
where the pretty call girl falls in love
with the Faberge egg on the mantelpiece and
we see her walk around the Glencoe mansion,
holding it in her smooth, white hands,
looking for forbidden rooms to enter.
We see that the master of the house, played by
the actor with the famous smile, would love her
forever if it didn't cost his parents so much
money. I'll be late for school, he says, please
be gone when I get home. There are things
you can do when you look like her, and one
of them is do whatever you want, which means
stumbling upon a room she shouldn't ever see,
where the master of the house keeps a cauldron
full of limbs of all the girls that came
before her and she drops the egg, which doesn't
shatter, but then the blood won't come off and
what is she supposed to do? He'll kill her, too.
No matter what she does he'll kill her,too,
and this is not only true of movies, but
true of life: if you're pretty, if you go
where you're not supposed to, looking for things
not meant for your eyes, you will have to explain
the blood on your hands somehow or else
have a few brothers to break down the door
when you are kneeling on an expensive rug
some day, and there is a famous movie star
standing above you with a great big knife.


 

ANOTHER SPECTACULAR DAY
WITH PLENTIFUL SUNSHINE

Good news: you still won't leave your wife for me,
but there is a horse tethered to the scaffolding

in front of my building and I think he might be mine.

Stealing horses means never having to say I love you,
are you as awake as I am, will you pat my head or

something. Stealing horses means never having to ask

to be asked what you're thinking. Like now, for example,
when all I can think of is this neighborhood boy named

Morris, the one I can see from my window at night,

he asked me today what the horse's name was
and I said I'm afraid to name him in case he dies

and the boy said, It's like in those books with dogs

where you know something bad will happen and
I said, Exactly. He asked if we could go for a ride.

This is a stolen horse, I said, possibly from upstate.

I said I didn't know if it would be safe, but I
invited him up to my fire escape and we let our legs

hang off the edge and watched the ferryboats

in the harbor until dusk and the water darkened.
Have you always lived on this island?, I said,

pretending I didn't see he had a bruise on his arm,

and Morris said, I have a bruise on my arm, and I
said, Can I do anything?, and he said, When you're

at the museum are you ever afraid of falling

through the railings they have around the balconies?
I nodded. There is a cautionary tale about a woman

and a boy who comes to her birthday party to tell her

he is her husband who died in the park and by the time
she believes him he says never mind. Morris, I said,

I think terrible thoughts about those that I love.

MONTREAL

This was the view from our hotel room,

this is what it looked like when you stood
on top of the mountain and closed your eyes,

this is the view from our bathroom, the old
one, I forget what the doorknob looked like.

Je me souviens. A Mari usque ad Mare.

After I fell down the mountain I took this picture
of my wrist. And here's a bruise. I wanted

to give you something better, a birch tree,
a river, but I also wanted to take you down

with me. This is a horse and this is a husband.

This is the carriage they ride past the church in.
I ran down Ste-Catherine when it was too late

to run, and watched a man kick another man's head
in. Here's a picture of that. You can see better

in this one, it's closer. Those are raindrops on the lens.

Leigh Stein was born in the year of the first robot-related death in the United States. She is editor of a collection of one sentence love stories with an extremely long title. Her most recent chapbook is A Pocket-Sized Map of My Heart, a collaboration with Jason Bredle. Other work has appeared in Softblow, Diagram, 42opus, Small Spiral Notebook, and can we have our ball back? She lives in Illinois, where she works in the performing arts. Visit her at http://maps.persephassa.com