Every so often... it happens... they... the words... disappear. Not selective, not mute. Just gone, the words are gone, they don't plan to return. You can slow, you can search... but that doesn't mean they appear.

Go ahead, reach out, search for your sound. The color that escaped from your lungs, that were shaped through your lips and pressed with the tongue. Find them, if you can. Fail, because you can't.

Though English, Spanish, French, Hindi, the tongue continues to form shapes, the lips press words through their funnel, the lungs shoot air up the throat to begin the vibrations. Everything functions.

Except that it doesn't.

Silence roars out, defining in their lack of presence. Distracting, drawing attention, but not the type you're looking for. There is pity. Your lips are imposters. They move in a mimic of words that have given up, that no longer wish to leave the depths of your chest and vibrate through the free air.

Pen and paper, your last resort. But there is a lack of patience, no one wants to wait for the words to escape onto the page and travel through the light into their eyes.

The words are still lost in your throat, in your lungs, in the blood flowing through your veins and into the neurons of your brain.

The electricity doesn't make its way into your mouth, instead it stays in your brain, sending flashes of heat through your spine and into your body as irritation spikes and frustration grows.

Still no sound manages a whisper across your lips.

They were hit nearly head-on, the crash was beautiful and terrifying; time stopped.

Metal twisting, the shrill sound of tires, bits of dark glass scattered everywhere; they played a sad melody as shards rained onto the asphalt. The scent of hot oil and antifreeze filled the air.

Louder than the sound of destruction was the release of air from her lungs as her body was thrown from the car. The sound of the glass cracking as it split from the weight of her. The sound of her body being thrown onto the hood of and the soft thud as she landed on the asphalt; it was too much and soon all he saw was black.

Ears ringing and eyes hardly able to focus he fumbled numb fingers to the seatbelt release. He felt drunk, sick, asleep. An eternity passed as his hands found the handle of the driver side door. Flashes of pain spread over his body, but in his pain drunk stupor his mind focused only on her.

Releasing himself from the prison of his crumpled car, his body fell heavy. The rain-soaked asphalt felt cool against his skin. In and out of consciousness, he crawled to her body as quickly as his pain would allow.

She lay still, her bright red hair a strange contrast against the newly laid road and her rain-soaked body. Her peach skin, sun-kissed with freckles had lost its color. Her warmth was stolen, replaced with a cold wetness unfamiliar to his touch.

He tried calling out to her, his voice lost through the chaos. He knew then, her aura, the bright energy she radiated had been stolen by the night. He watched the light fade from her eyes while he scrambled to hold her. She left him. With a blood stained tear and one last smile, she left him.

He brought his face to hers, desperate to hear breathing, craving her warmth.

Silence.

-A.e.

On the way to the ocean, there is a road that disappears into the sand and gets swallowed up beneath the foam. It's only there if you aren't looking for it, and you can only travel along it if you don't know it's there. I walked it once and never again. It led me past the waves, out into the deep blue where the fish float instead of swim and the seaweed sways far beneath the surface, shifting against the current. I'd come to the beach alone that day, eager to spread out in the sunshine with a new book. I can't remember what the book was about, but it must not have been very good. That, or the pull of the ocean was just more intriguing.

I left the book splayed out on my towel, spine pulled taut, and I walked into the waves. I kept walking.

See, sometimes, there are paths we don't understand. But we have to travel them anyway. We have to know where they lead.

I still can't describe what I saw. Perhaps it was another world, a rip between universes that I was never supposed to know existed. Perhaps it was a dream, brought on by the heat of the day and the wild musings of my then-young mind. Perhaps it never happened at all.

But I remember a world colored in the blue-green light of the water. I remember stepping beneath the surface, eyes wide open without the sting of salt invading my every blink. The creatures I saw there were not of this earth: a strange and terrifying array of colors and forms that floated around me, beside me, above me. I walked along the sand for a long time, knowing even then that I would need to try to remember the things I saw here in this strange place. Knowing that I would never pass this way again.

I awoke on the beach in time to watch the sun sink below the waves, towel swirled around my ankles and my book sitting just where I'd left it on the sand, spine cracked and hardened from the day's heat. I rose slowly, a bit dazed, and gathered my things. Made the short walk back home.

It was years ago now. Life has changed for me since then, as it does. Good things, bad things. All come and gone. But that place not of this world, the place beneath the ocean's silent road, has stayed inside my head for all of it. I remember those flashes of colors that couldn't be named, those wisps of shimmering light and shifting patterns flowing and writhing beneath the waves.

It's possible it was never real. It's possible I made it all up inside my head on a particularly hot day in June on a mostly-abandoned beach when I was seventeen years old. But maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe there are places we'll never know, things we couldn't imagine even if we had the privilege of seeing them with our own eyes. Maybe we are all spinning beneath the blue waves. Maybe we are moving against the current, and maybe we are drifting between shapeless colors and walking below the surface of it all and maybe we don't know what any of it will ever mean.

But we must try to at least remember it. Write it down in our notebooks, type it across our keyboards, imprint it in our minds. We must know that we were here and that we saw it, lived it, knew it once.

For we may not pass this way again.

I’d held him to myself for four months. Four months of a double life where some could see parts of me while I forced another side down, down down down, until even I was starting to get confused about who I was. Four months. Imagine it, that’s literally half the time a baby needs to be developed. Four. Fucking. Months.

The process, or whatever you would define "coming out" as, started two weeks ago. Two and a half, maybe. It was one of the nights where I couldn’t feel myself. Feel myself sounds dirty, which is kind of gross, but I have held the facade of being almost purely asexual for so long that maybe I was actually starting to believe it, despite having done so much stuff with him. Although this is anonymous, although you don’t know, although there is so much that could be way worse, his name, his identity, has to stay mine. Because no one really tells you that, once you come out, once you make yourself known as “gay” and not devoid of sexual feelings, these things that were once yours start to become the world’s. A product of a consequence, a small victory of not having a secret. So if I’m going to remain sane, the only reasonable thing I can do is keep pieces of it for myself and myself only.

Wow, that entire sequence right there was a tangent. Here’s another one, a small one, though, I promise I’ll keep it brief, but tangents are what started this. Off-hand topics, uncalled-for responses, bits and pieces of the mask I painted onto my face just slowly chipping off until I couldn’t take it anymore. I need you to understand that, to know that, if I had held it for much longer, I might never have revealed it all. A double life, one of straight-but-hinted-gay-and-asexual me and gay-oh-so-gay-and-going-out-late-at-night-to-see-a-man-and-kiss-a-man-and-oh-did-I-mention-he's-gay? me, like some sort of pretty socially fucked superhero. Except, you know, my own deception was my worst villain.

It started with a story. A tangent of my own private writings, a confession on the cheap Dell laptop's screen. Sometimes, when you just write for yourself, you see the little bits of plastic you threw in your own pond, hoping they'd sink to the bottom, just casually float back up, muddier but somehow cleaner than before. This is what happens when I'm depressed, when I can't feel myself (see, told you tangents are a real thing in my life). I write. And sometimes, you get too close to comfort, even for yourself. Here's a bit of it, and the motif of the story was glasses and how they let you see, but when you lie, these glasses become cracked, smudged, until you can't even see two inches in front of your face. Hell, is your nose even there? You don't really know. Not to detract from this writing itself, but to believe it, to see the amount of thoughts bubbling up in my head, you have to see it. See it in the way that I couldn't for so long.

Now, I sit in classrooms. I text friends. Or at least, I think they’re my friends. I accidentally keep secrets, because who wants to know about that, but what if they found out? Would they hate you? Would they drop you just like you dropped your glasses into the ocean, letting them wash away so that you were nearly blind for two days straight? And what if you tell them? Will they hate you then? Will they hate the initial lie? So.

You hold it in. You let the tears build up to the brim of your lenses, misty with your heaving breath, and you just play the part. You act clueless, although you know exactly what’s happening. You act innocent, although you know the things you’ve done. You lie and hold to it, you play the part, you get in the game, you shape up your personality and your life until everyone sees you as T.J., the boy who’s clueless, who’s smart, who’s dumb, who lacks any common sense, who has to break a little bit of himself each time he reinforces the web, who is just so tired of holding it in that he lets it leak through and everyone reacts with surprise, and you know it’d be even worse. So you keep going. You keep mortaring new bricks. You keep getting new pairs of glasses. You keep seeing these things, these lines, these threads of possibility.

And you wish that you’d never gotten any glasses at all.

Look at him. T.J., the boy who was literally dammed up in his own head. That's me. That's the person I am, I let the water rise and rise, but the reason I came out at all because of him. Not T.J., that's me, "him" as in the secret I get to keep from you. My own little piece of the world. But those last two paragraphs is part of what started it.

I asked my friend Samantha if she would something for me and tell me if she hated me. To confess, to alleviate some of my guilt that really shouldn't have felt like guilt. She didn't hate me. She said she loved me and that if I needed to talk, she "is always there for" me. I cried. A lot. Not uncommon for me, but still, figured it should be mentioned. And then, after a while, she asked a question, because she knew I wasn't going to let it out without someone telling me it was okay too.

"T.J.," she texted, "Is there something you want to tell me?"

I stared at my phone for a while. A good five, six minutes. My keyboard was open on the chat, the six keys just glowing, like they knew what was meant to be said. Prophesied, predicted. Just type it, I told myself, Just tell her and it will be over.

"I'm gay."

There's moments like this, pieces of your life that feel like there should be a grand score in the background or a lack of one, just a noise-blinded scene. You wait, and you don't know what to expect, but somehow, you're certain about something.

"Okay."

I sort of paused my heart here, can't tell you how I did it. It was the same feeling I got when I was with him, when I stepped into his car at 3 am, just to drive, just to see what Greensboro held for us. And she says what needs to be said. A simple word. So simple.

"And?"

And.

This is what I was talking about, the certainty. The knowledge that you just know, and I knew what I knew. This was enough. This was enough. There's no conflict. There's no disturbing plot twist. Just the simple acceptance of who I am. That's who Samantha represented, what she represented.

Acceptance.

So before I start texting so much, before the tangent comes back, before I get lost in my own hidden glee, I made myself write something down in my Google Keep, a quick flick of my home screen onto the application.

I typed down, "This is not an uphill battle as long as you have someone on your side."

I studied it, the curves in the S's, the word "not." I listen to her dings as she tells me it'll all be okay, that no one is going to hate me and that I knew that she was right. This didn't mean I wasn't scared as hell, I absolutely still was.

Pressure, though, isn't immediately let off in things like this.

Four months, I had held him to myself. And now some of the steam has hissed out of me. And you know what?

Smaller victories mean winning the war at the end of it all. "You won this battle but you haven't won the war" is literally one of the most bullshittiest things I've ever heard. One battle is enough, enough to hold you through.

And I'm glad this battle was enough for me to finally shine through.

#lgbt #comingout #gay #nonfiction

There’s something beautiful about a completely blank piece of paper, just as there is in an untrampled field of freshly fallen snow, or a present that has yet to be unwrapped, still tied up with a bow. Its pureness seems to call out for admiration, and yet at the same time, its emptiness demands that one give it one’s attention. The page compels the writer to deface it with something of their own, just as the snow seems to urge children to play in it, and the present urges one to unwrap it. The act of writing destroys whatever barren beauty the blank sheet held, but replaces it with a soul created by emotion. Every word is a small flame of passion in the brightly lit darkness, kindled only by its author and perceived only by its reader.

So then, what starts the process? Where, and how, and why, and what. The start of writing. Of giving a thing a soul. Obviously a story cannot come from nothing. Even science has admitted that nothing can be created or destroyed, that matter is only to be used and reused and dies and is born and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. The page is the kindling, the pen is the match, and yet the writer has to be the one to light the fire. So it follows that any good piece of writing must begin with the writer, and with his or her thoughts and ideas, prejudices and vices. And so it must be with every writer, and so it is with myself. The blank page beckons, teases almost, and asks me to put on it whatever I want and feel, to begin something. To give it life. It’s a relaxing process, or so I’ve always thought. Spilling out whatever I can find within myself, unimportant as it might be, not because I want others to find it, or because I think others will want it, but because I enjoy filling in the vague ideas in my mind, or at least finding somewhere less claustrophobic to put them. By putting my mind onto pieces of blank paper, I can see it more clearly, without the disorientating lens of my own self doubts and fears. The process of writing, then, starts with my own knowledge and emotions. It is the half-formed dreams, the unclear fantasies and hazy memories, pieces of the creations of my own mind made real, set down before me in black and white, to imbue themselves into the minds of others. It begins with a piece of my own soul being painstakingly wrestled onto paper, in order for it to become the formed whole of the paper itself. And it begins like this:

Blank papers are arranged in front of me, a pen in my hand. Steam drifts lazily upwards from a mug of coffee beside me, and I take a sip. In the background, music continues to play, the soft murmur of a piano. I listen to the music as I sit, the usual gentle harmonies and occasional dramatic crescendos that so often accompany the scratching of my pen. Outside, rain pelts soflty against my window, and a few dim rays of winter sunlight pass into the room, forming long splashes of color on the carpeted floor. Time passes, maybe minutes and maybe hours, and still I don’t move. I can’t concentrate. I have no desire to write. Whether I write well or poorly depends on the day and the hour, but I can almost always write. And so I place the pen down on the paper, and I sip the coffee, and I sit and wait. And more time passes.

And then I laugh. Not loudly, more of a quiet chuckle really, but still a laugh. I can’t put my pen to the paper, I can’t create any discourse, and I cannot even think of what I should be writing, and today it doesn’t matter. Because for the first time, I don’t have to write to see clearly.

Writing, for me, is a form of escapism. It allows me to distance myself from my own thoughts. But there is a limit to the curative effects of writing. Despite whatever endorsements therapists may give it, writing is not some sort of mythical panacea. I can use it to define myself, to put my thoughts into their respective proverbial boxes, and to dot the i’s and t’s of my fantasies made real. And yet, I cannot read my writing as something new. I cannot learn about myself by defining the parts of myself that I already know. I cannot talk to words on a page. I cannot love paper and ink, not in any way that the paper and ink can reciprocate. Anything I can write will be a piece of myself, able to instill emotion, but having none of its own.

But a person is something with a mind of their own. A person is something you can share yourself with, and have something shared with you in turn. A person you can talk to, learn about, learn from, cry with, laugh with, and still have something new to do with after all of it. The act of writing allows for the rebirth of your own ideas into something tangible, but the act of loving allows you to take something from yourself and create something new, with the help of another. And a person, in short, is something you can love that can love you in return.

A new love, then, creates an extremely special kind of excitement. Said another way, a new love is a weird sort of something brilliant, and amazing, and completely blindingly stunning. This is the kind of emotion that a thousand poets, philosophers, and Valentine's Day card creators have struggled with describing throughout the centuries. It’s an indescribable feeling of pure joy mixed with pure hope. Thoughts of a future shared in the arms of another. A constant reminder that forbids you from not smiling. A snow day, christmas morning, start of summer sort of happiness. The knowledge that there is a person who understands you better than any other, and who allows you to know them in that way in return. A person who you will implicitly forgive, even while still arguing with them. It will be hard, sometimes incredibly painful even, and entirely worth it. There’s something telling about the phrase “falling in love”. Because you can be hungry, happy, sleepy, or horny, but you can only ever be “in” love. That’s because love is more than just an emotion. It’s a state of mind, a way of feeling, and a way of living. It’s sharing yourself with another person, a mixing of souls if you will, that makes you never want to be seperated from them.

Writing is a time for self-reflection, and for sharing what you think with whoever may care. It gives life to your thoughts and color to your daydreams. But love, a life beyond writing and one’s self, is something beautiful that is entirely beyond anything you could make on your own.

So if I can’t write sometimes, I’m perfectly okay with that. I can always write again another day. But, at least for now, I’m going to enjoy the beauty of a new beginning.

The wind whistles in each of our ears as we fly. Higher and faster than any of us alive, we soar through weathers unspeakable to our kind. Gliding through clouds then skimming through waters. Our strength  grows together as our efficiency keeps us alive. With the same burdened responsibilities we fly. We are brothers in the air. 

When strong we lead, when weak we follow.  Our potent leaders tire and step down for the next mighty forces to charge our flight. The formation never breaks. With vigorous commitment we are unshaken by the miles we fly. Our common goal keeps us disciplined because only together can we reach our mark. That has been our most natural law.

And yet, there is nothing natural like an anchor in a race. A debilitated soldier. A rusty cog in the machine. A weak link spotted from the corner of my eye.  A weakened joint across from where I glide. We both having just stepped down, I rejoin one end of the formation and count the seconds for my commrade to reach the other. Each second more eternal than the next. He flaps his weakened wings with invalidity. Frail and almost incapacitated he eventually reaches the other end. Even when he’s making the least effort out of the rest, he is still flying with strain. I watched the tumor in our system as his breakable resistance dooms us. I turn forward in disgust. The exact same labor was done by each of us yet all showed composure, but my friend on the other end. But, I cast away my concerns and give into my own resolve. We were nearing our destination.

It was time to land. Our Powerful leaders landed first followed by the recovering champions. Me and the susceptible degenerate across from me would land last. It was finally our turn to reach the ground. I let him get below me so that without hesitation I could eliminate the thing that threatened our order. With surging emotion, I rushed to attack . I sunk my talons deep into his feathers. His blood had drenched over my talons as we whirled through the sky, neither giving in. But as expected, he wavered and I positioned him towards the ground. My wings, never exhausted after flight, pounded the air as I aimed for the ground. We crashed on soil with him underneath me. My wings spread in victory and I basked in ending the imperfection that resided in the flock. The others only observed what needed to be done. Without warning,  the disgrace pecked a chunk of my eye and rendered me half blind. With one swoop he released himself from my grip. His talons now wrapped around my neck.

The swift and harsh movement of his talons was enough for the snap to be heard. The others only observed what needed to be done.

Consider the arrival of a new tenant to a basement apartment. He is a young man in his late twenties. He has a goatee and sideburns, because the year is 1998, and most young men of that time had those things on their face. He wears jeans and a t-shirt, has very few belongings, all of which fit in the bed of a rusted pickup he’s backed into the drive of an old home. He turns the key in the door and enters for the first time to scope out the place he will call home. It is possible our story begins here.

It is also possible it ends here. Had we been following the previous tenant, this might feel right, as an ending. Perhaps our concern should be with this other person. He too is a young man in his late twenties, his appearance so similar as to be the same, whose departure is its own beginning. So you see, these decisions of story are arbitrary, and fallible. Mistakes might be made, wrong choices, when we attempt to decide such things.

And the question is, where to go from here. Which young man should concern us? The one arriving, or the one departing? And if we choose incorrectly, what then? I say we, but clearly it is I who must do the choosing. I must decide for us. And you must trust me.

I choose the man arriving. We will begin there. It will be our point of entry to the story, but not necessarily the beginning. Though at some point we may find ourselves back where we began. Or starting over. It all has much to do with the house.

The house has been crouched over the basement for one hundred years. It has a long history, and this history is unknown to us. The history may matter a great deal, but we cannot know how it matters, only that it does. We cannot know all the souls who’ve lived in the home, only that they have. Meals have been prepared, meat cooked in ovens, sauces simmered on stoves, bottles of wine spilled, children conceived. Wallpaper has been chosen, installed, enjoyed, become tiresome, been removed. Terrible fights have occurred. Love has been shared. And the residue of it all lingers like smoke in the walls.

People have died within these walls, and some have lived, more or less. There was word of a suicide. These details are lost to us. We know only that they must influence anyone who enters. Some people are more sensitive to these things, some less. But the house has had experiences over time, and absorbed them, as all houses do. And these things come to bear. They matter.

They matter because the basement is no longer a basement. Where once it had concrete blocks for walls and bare earth for a floor, it now has a carpeted floor, finished walls painted a neutral shade to beckon new tenants. The house above has been cut into four separate dwellings. It is no longer a family home, but home to many, some for short periods of time. People come and go now more than ever before. The life of the house has accelerated, as the house itself has aged. The older it gets, the faster it spins. It might wish to hold its weary head.

So there is risk involved in choosing where to begin, you see. But we've chosen. Or rather I've chosen, and you must trust me. Let us begin.

As the New Year approaches I can’t truly help but express thanks and reflect over what I’ve written. It is impossible for me not to make this because 1) how can you continue writing without direction and reason? 2) You must always be thankful towards those who give you chance to express yourself.

Let’s begin with those who have read my poems and other writings, I know not all 76 people will read what I have to post, but for those who have stopped by and at least have seen one of my poems I appreciate that. It is amazing to be complimented over what you write, because most people are doubtful. Doubtful of what you write is even at the slightest good, as a writer, improvement is the chain that keeps us ascending and ensuring we don’t give up. I must thank each one, although some may be spam accounts, I still have to thank you all. (As I write this first draft I realize I cannot thank each of my greatest supporters, actually I can. I swear i’m not a complete idiot.)

I will always write for the sake of taking darkness and using it to create beauty. Darkness can range from being sad over a break up or being stuck in the loop of suicidal thoughts.

I can’t say I know the extremes of these situations but I know that darkness isn’t an anchor; it should never keep you down forever: it should make you realize how much you have and what you’re capable of, that their is more awaiting you in the future. As I see it, only darkness can push you into the light, I’m not stating that I wish evil to run rampant. I want darkness to reveal what weakens us and what can be done to improve us. As any good villain does for a hero, as any bad day does for the hopeful person.

I write because it challenges you to create something better, or try jumping over hoops such as writers block, which traps you when you least expect it. I can’t always find a challenge that I can genuinely write about ( example, on the First Day of Christmas) , but when I do, it is mainly me shooting out those words. I can write an entire story or poem that is purely bull- but I can’t live with the fact that those words were set for a few to view. Writing is a new world for me, and I view it as something to embrace and repel whenever it is required.

(I know that not all this will hold, and that at this moment my mind is fuzzy, I can’t properly come up with something concrete. Nevertheless I write to create, and not to defecate.)

I find that reading certainly inspires me, currently a couple of good poems, to try to innovate. I don’t enjoy taking a whole bite off someone’s style, but It just occurs subconsciously. You attempt to just make a writing that will be enjoyed, and then suddenly you read it to realize that the way it is formed is similar to someone you had recently read. At times it looks similar, but has a splash of you, something that you recognize is unique to just you, not always but sometimes. It is strange to think that ideas pop up from ideas of others, (including this one and those following it) but that’s how we advance a topic and create. I prefer classics over new book releases, because classics have almost a stamp that no amount of time can possibly tear its power that it has struck onto every mind.

The first ” Why I Write” was me establishing myself and my goals at the moment and as seen above I have yet to complete them. Every once in a couple of strange months it’s nice to see where your going and how you’ll get there.

Reading it back, I realize that I had more in me than I do now, a fire that could not be brought down.

A large reason why I write is the feeling I get when others see your work and enjoy it; I mean actually enjoying it. Perhaps I can’t see your faces, but you prosers are all amazing, the fact that you took the time to read anything of mine is just amazing. Most of the times when I post something I await the red numbers to appear saying someone liked your work, I feel ashamed by this, but I can’t help but be truthful. I feel ashamed to beg for people to read my work, I believe that if you find my writings then it is up to you to decide. I see this all as something that requires some sort of honor and respect.

This was written for all you amazing followers:(I put the @ for the comments beforehand , and I was to lazy to go through and remove them for the amazing writers/ followers, don’t judge me darn it)

@UnderMeYou(doesn’t follow, but has supported me from the start. Thank you so much!)

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There’s a chest in the attic that doesn’t have a lock and doesn’t need one, because nobody ever opens it. The chest is old and wooden and there are cobwebs stretched around its outsides like stakes holding a tent in place against the wind. To the left of the chest is an old lamp with no lightbulb and a few sets of old pictures, tucked away in boxes. Sometimes Maria will bring a flashlight with her up to the attic and shuffle through the pictures, just to look and remember. One day, she thinks, she’ll put them all into a giant photo album to be passed down through generations. For now, it’s hard to look for too long.

Maria doesn’t touch the chest because she believes there is nothing in it, so there isn’t. But one day, Maria leaves for a weekend shift and forgets that the stairway leading up to the attic hasn’t been pushed back into the ceiling and hidden away like it usually is.

She’s managed to raise a curious daughter.

Maria encourages any and all questions, because she knows that allowing fourteen-year-old Elena to be privy to every tiny detail about her father and about the war he never came back from is the best way to keep her from running off to find her own answers. Maria never lies, but she doesn’t say everything, either. Mostly because that would be far too complicated and far too much.

But then she leaves the stairway to the attic open.

There’s never been a rule against Elena going up there, she simply never has. But it’s Sunday and all of her homework is done and it is one of those rare, rainy Los Angeles days. And Mom left for work and Elena is bored. And the stairway is right there. So she climbs up, and she finds the boxes full of photos. She’s seen them all before, but only a few times when she’d asked for them.

“It’s not good to lose yourself to memories, mija,” her mother had explained. “We hold onto him because he deserves to be remembered and because we will always miss him, but we do not fall so far into the past that we forget that we are here without him now. That we have our own stories to continue writing.”

Elena shuffles through the pictures, listening to the steady drum of raindrops on the roof. She tucks a piece of dark hair behind her ear, nose twitching a little at the dust settling around her. If there were any ghosts in the attic, they would perhaps smile at how similar Maria and Elena look when they get lost within their thoughts. Elena bites her lip the way her mother does, settles her spine against the wooden chest, and lets herself picture what it felt like when Dad used to hold her.

It is Sunday and all of her homework is done and her mother is at work and outside the rain still falls, so Elena does not brush at the tears that slide down her cheeks as she stares at each picture. When she's done, she places the photos back into their boxes and slides them back beside the lamp without a lightbulb. And then she turns to look more closely at the chest she’d been leaning against, brushing away the cobwebs until she can see the small, metal nameplate on the front: Daniel A. Badilla.

She smoothes her fingers reverently across her father’s name, pondering. And then, with a wary breath, she opens the chest.

The air shimmers and bends, and Elena can see small, rippling waves forming in the dust in the space above the chest. The dustmites twirl around each other like sparks from a fire curling up into the wind, except they do not disappear into the air. Instead, they solidify and take shape, twisting and swirling as Elena watches, open-mouthed.

And then he is there, and he is more than a photograph.

Her father smiles at her, and Elena can feel new tears sliding down her cheeks before she even forms a coherent thought about what’s just happened. And it must be an illusion, a dream, a fevered wish she’s urged to life inside the confines of her own head. It’s a stupid instinct, but all Elena can think to do is pinch herself. Hard. She is halfway through gasping at the unexpected sharpness of her own fingernails when the sound of her father’s booming laughter stops her short. She blinks up at him, shaking her head, and his laughter fades to a small, sad smile that pulls at the corner of his right lip in just the way she remembers.

“Don’t hurt yourself, mija,” he says. For some reason, Elena thinks he should be wearing his uniform. Instead, he is in dark jeans and a faded Black Sabbath T-shirt that Elena knows is tucked away in the upper-right hand corner of her closet. Sometimes it still smells like him if she holds it close and breathes deep enough.

“Papá?” she whispers, afraid that the dustmotes will suddenly decide to scatter apart, leaving nothing but empty space. But the mirage of her father remains, and it nods. Elena blinks and pinches herself again, though she’s not sure she wants to awaken from this dream.

“It’s not possible…”

“You know better than to question what can be possible, mi amor,” her father says. He stands with a straight spine and wide shoulders, and to anyone else he might be intimidating. To Elena, he has always just been Dad. “What does your mother always say, eh?”

“Miracles are born from our faith in the miraculous,” Elena recites automatically, blushing when she sees the pride well up in her father’s eyes.

“That’s right,” he says. “My god, you’ve grown so big. Almost time for your quinceañera, no? You think your tía will run out of tears before the party ends?”

Elena snorts a little, remembering how hard her aunt had cried when her cousin Leo had finally learned to ride his bike without training wheels. Then she frowns. Tía’s eyes had been red for months and months after Dad’s funeral. Her father watches her expression carefully, reaching down to brush one of the tears from her eye. Elena feels only a whisper of his touch against her skin.

Suddenly, all Elena needs is to feel her father’s strong arms around her again. She reaches for him and he pulls her against his chest. He is not completely solid against her, his form shifting slightly beneath her fingers, but if she focuses enough, she can almost squeeze him tightly enough.

“Why is it so different?” she asks, feeling childish for asking. Of course it would be different.

Her father shrugs. “I do not know all the rules yet, mija. But I bet we can learn them together. How does that sound to you?”

Elena bites her lip the way her mother does, and the ghost in the attic does smile at the similarity. “You’ll be here? You’ll stay?” she asks.

“For as long as you need me, mija, I will stay,” her Dad promises. “But you cannot visit every day or even every week. If there are things to say, you wait until many pages have been filled, and then you can tell me all at once. Do you understand?”

Elena nods. “I understand.”

“Okay,” her father nods. “And understand this, too: you are not writing your story only for me. I will be glad to hear all about the beautiful life you create, but you must remember that you are writing it for yourself.”

Around them, the dust has begun to stir again, a breeze with no origin curling up from the floorboards and slithering around the form of Elena’s father.

“I love you, Dad. I’ll come see you soon,” Elena promises, her bottom lip quivering.

“Te amo, mi querida,” her father answers, even as he loses his shape, dissolving back into the chest in a short, tiny whoosh of air. When Elena's tears have finally stopped falling, she slowly closes the wooden chest engraved with her father’s name, walks back down the attic stairs, curls up in her bed and goes to sleep.

The next morning, Elena brings Maria up to the attic, tells her not to be afraid as she opens the chest and waits for the dust to swirl. But the air remains still, the floorboards silent. Her father does not come, and Maria does not understand what she was meant to see. Elena is too upset to tell her.

Years pass, and Elena visits her father as often as she can. Tears made from tiny specks of dust slide down his cheeks when she shows him her college diploma. On her wedding night, she insists to her new husband, Jacob, that it will be easiest to stop by her mother’s house for the extra toothbrush she’ll need on their honeymoon. There is a small coating of dust along the bottom of her wedding dress by the time she makes her way back outside and into the car. Jacob doesn’t notice, and Elena doesn’t care. She’d gotten her father-daughter dance.

Elena gets a marketing job and then a promotion, and she tells her father about it with wistful excitement. The job is in Atlanta, and she and Jacob are already packing. She promises to visit soon, that she will have stories to tell when she returns.

The fire that consumes her mother’s house four months later doesn’t leave much in its wake, but luckily Maria herself had already evacuated a few days earlier.

Elena’s first thousand thoughts are for her mother, grateful for her safety but mourning with her for all that she lost to the flames. Her next thousand thoughts are for the wooden chest in the attic, the one she knows will no longer be there. When the fire is finally contained three days later, Elena flies home to help her mother sort through whatever might remain. She insists that Jacob stay behind in Atlanta for his own newly-found job, but he takes the plane seat beside hers.

It takes a long time for Elena to end her mother’s embrace after they land, neither of them ready to see what is left standing after the fire. But Elena thinks of her father, of the now-lost pictures in the attic and the strength he always carried with him and insisted she had inside of her, too. She rolls her shoulders back, lifts her head, and leads the way.

Elena stands in the middle of the rubble, her chest aching. After hours of searching, they have managed to salvage almost nothing.

“Elena,” Jacob says, so softly it is almost a whisper. “We should go back to the hotel. We’ll come back tomorrow, okay?”

Elena shakes her head, tears welling up behind her eyes for what feels like the millionth time today. Jacob frowns and cants his head, directing Elena’s eyes over to Maria. Elena’s mother is perched on the singed remains of a coffee table in what used to be the living room. Her legs are crossed, her thin arms are covered in a layer of soot, and she is lost somewhere inside her head, staring through a matrix of support beams that used to be a wall. Elena turns back to her husband and nods in surrender, and Jacob begins making his way through the rubble to get to Maria. Elena can’t hear what Jacob says to her, but a moment later, he reaches out a hand to help her up, and she takes it.

Elena sighs and turns to take one, last look at the rubble. A glint of something on the ground catches her eye, and she bends down to retrieve it, her eyes once again filling with tears when she realizes what it is. She runs her fingers over the silver nameplate, smudging at the ash until her father’s name can be seen clearly. Behind her, Jacob is leading Maria back to the car.

“You promised,” Elena whispers to nobody but the smog-filled air, her lip quivering. “You promised that you would be here for as long as I needed you, Papá. And I will always need you.”

Around her feet, the air remains still.

It is another, long moment before she can force herself to move again, but she finally manages to make her way back to the car where Jacob and her mother are already waiting, her father’s nameplate gripped tight inside her palm. They drive back to the hotel together in silence, the air around them thick with smoke and grief. As they make their way to the elevator, Maria asks her daughter to come to her room before she goes to sleep.

“Only for a moment, mija,” her mother urges when she sees the exhaustion pulling at her daughter’s eyelids. Elena nods and follows her mother into her hotel room while Jacob opens the door to the one across from it.

Once inside her mother’s room, Elena sinks down onto the mattress. “What is it, mamá?” she asks. Maria holds up a finger. Un momento. She shuffles over to her suitcase in the corner of the room, returning a moment later with an enormous, blue book in her hands. She passes it off to her daughter.

“What is it?” Elena asks, something fluttering inside her chest as she presses her fingers into the thick spine.

“Open it,” her mother says, settling into the mattress beside her. Elena does.

She gasps, letting her fingers drift along the outline of her father’s face from where he smiles back at her from a familiar photograph. She turns the page, and then the next, allowing herself to get lost in the memories she’d thought were gone forever.

“When did you...?” Elena asks after a moment, turning to face her mother.

“The day after you left for Atlanta,” Maria answers. “One day, my grandchildren will need to know who their grandfather was. I had time to pack a small bag before I evacuated."

Elena huffs out a breath, letting her gaze drift back to the photo album. “Do you remember when I showed you that old chest in the attic all those years ago?” she asks. From the corner of her eye, her mother nods. “It was Dad. He was in there, somehow. It was some kind of illusion or magic. I visited all the time, told him about my life. And now he’s gone. He’s really gone, and I don’t know if I can stand it.”

Maria runs a hand through her daughter’s long hair. “Oh mija, he will never be gone. You know this.”

“But it’s not the same!” Elena shouts suddenly, flinging the photo album onto the floor. She rises from the bed, pacing furiously. “He was here. I could feel his arms around me!”

To Elena’s incredulity, her mother laughs. “You think you are the only one he came to see?” she asks, shaking her head.

Elena freezes. “What?” she asks.

Maria chuckles again, but it is weary and filled with sadness. “Oh Elena,” she coos. “Your father comes to me often. Asleep. Awake. In the middle of a long work shift. I can feel his fingers in my hair. I can see his lip curl around that devious, little smile of his. The ones we love always find ways of coming back to us.”

Elena shakes her head, begins pacing again. “No, you don’t understand. This was different.”

Maria sighs. She gets up from the bed, retrieves the discarded photo album. Elena watches guiltily as she returns it to her suitcase. “It has been a long day,” Maria says. “Get some rest.”

Elena nods, hugs her mother hard before she goes. In the hallway between her mother’s room and the one she shares with Jacob, Elena tries to collect herself. She breathes deeply, pulling her father’s nameplate from her pocket.

The air moves.

Elena’s breath catches, and for a moment she thinks she imagined it. But then something shifts below the surface of the hallway carpeting. The fibers of the carpet straighten and then break off from the ground, swirling out into the space in front of her, twisting around themselves until he appears as if he had always been there, as if he had never left. Elena gasps, any words she might’ve said stuttering to a stop before she can form them. Her father speaks first.

“Mija,” he says, smiling crookedly. “I thought you knew by now that it was never about that silly, wooden box.”

“Papá?” Elena whispers, choking on the words.

Her father smiles softly, reaching to brush away the fresh tears on her cheeks. “I am here, always,” he says, gesturing to encompass the space around them. “I am in the wind that curls around your hair. In the spaces between each breath you take. In the beating of your heart. I am everywhere you go, Elena, because you choose to take me with you.”

Elena curls her fingers more tightly around the nameplate, smiling through her tears. “As long as I need you?” she checks.

“As long as you need me,” he nods, holding her gaze.

“Okay,” Elena says.

“Okay,” answers the memory of her father.

The air shifts again, his form rippling and shimmering in front of her. The last of his visage fades back into the hotel carpeting. Elena smiles.

Shhh! I may be considered a predator or a psychopath, but I take pride in being a harvester of humanity. You might say that I just nibble around the edges of lives. The profilers believe I’m a male because of the manner in which the bodies are mutilated. All of them are wrong. If you saw me walking down the street, you would think I was a beautiful young woman with my stiletto heels and my sexy blue dress which matches my cornflower blue eyes. My skin is so lush that you would be tempted to drink it, inhaling it into your body. I don’t have to wear makeup because of my natural creamy coloring and blushing cheeks. My dark lashed eyes seem to look into your soul. But make no mistake – there is no feeling inside me.

Every man I have ever met wants me, except for this one. He just doesn’t seem interested which makes him more intriguing. I have seen him with women so I know he is not gay. Since I always need to be in control, I am determined to watch him and follow him until I can fulfill my desires. I have never felt any empathy for any of my victims and he will not be any different. I know that I am more intelligent than he is and I will have my way. Usually, I kill them after a sexual assignation but I don’t think this will be the case with him. He is completely oblivious to me as I lurk in dark corners, waiting for him to be alone and unwary. It’s worth it to take my time in order to get what I want. Power is my aphrodisiac and I am excited and alert.

Tonight, I am outside watching his outline against the fluttering curtains in his bedroom. I linger on thoughts of sex with him but it would be all for my benefit since I give nothing in return. I haven’t perfected my plan yet but he will be mine. I observe his shadow leave his bedroom and head toward the kitchen which I can’t see fully. I know it is there, though, because I have been in his apartment, rifling through his drawers as I learn all about him. I like to be prepared for all contingencies. I figure that he must be getting a snack because he is taking a long time.

I hear a slight snap behind me and whirl around to see my prey holding a gun which he jams into my stomach. I am not afraid because this slow motion stalking needed to come to a head.

“Turn around and march straight forward to my apartment door,” he commands as he nudges me with his weapon.

I twirl around and do as he says. Why should I confront him now when everything is working out well, although not as I planned? He herds me into his bedroom and tells me to remove my clothes. His eyes move upward as I reveal my full lush breasts and wet my lips with my tongue. I have him exactly where I want him. I am so aroused because this is just like my first blind date! But, in reality, he is the one who is blind to the danger that I promise.

I kick his gun out of his fist with my shapely legs and hurl my body over the weapon. I roll over with the gun in my hands and shoot him between the eyes. Now the fun will begin. I walk to the bedroom door to go to the kitchen to get some knives to complete my handiwork but I find the door is self-locking and of such sturdy construction that I am unable to kick it open. I race to the window and find bars over the panes. I panic for a moment as I realize I can’t get out. I have no weapons other than the gun and try to shoot out the door knob but it doesn’t budge. His apartment is isolated and there is no one around to call for help.

What is an entrapped psychopath to do? I am beginning to get hungry and thirsty and must come up with a plan for my survival. I claw at his body with my sharp nails until I have an opening in his femoral artery, lower my head and begin drinking my fill. When my thirst is quenched, I begin to tear chunks of his flesh with my teeth, chewing them until I am able to swallow them down. There is plenty here to sustain me for a while. It does bother me a little that when they find our skeletons, they will think he was the predator. I want them all to know that I deserve the credit for this. I dip my fingers in his blood and begin penning a note on his floor, telling the world that I want the fame and the glory to be attributed to me. I have satisfaction in knowing I will go down in history as the greatest female killer of all time.

“He must have forced her to write it,” the detectives said when they found the remains. “That poor innocent young woman.”