las estrellas fugaces que ví en aquella noche.

I have dreams of memories that are not my own.

I walk through rooms worn with years, they are dull and dusty.

I run my hands across the cracked baroque wallpaper that surrounds me.

The patterns touch and connect, leading me to a forgotten place.

Porcelain sheets adorn the tired bed in place of perfection, pillows lay in wait for eyes to close on top of them.

Pictures of people that have lived so much life hang like bodies.

They melt and weep down the walls.

They weep for me and for themselves.

The window that bathes everything in twisting streams of soft light is open, but veiled by a fragile curtain that doesn't move.

Through that curtain, through the intricate map of cracks in the cold glass, I see the night sky.

It's dark and opaque but still bright, and somehow the stars still flicker and dance across the horizon.

Surely, this sky is the same as the one I see in my waking world.

Surely, this sky will embrace me.

Yo tengo recuerdos. Mis recuerdos.

laughing in the water

there's a man at the bottom of the sea.

his hair does not sway gently, moving like threads in the

comforting currents.

his skin is not moist and ashen like porcelain.

his hands do not grasp the sand and grit, fingers running

through grains like time.

his eyes are not shining nor limpid, soul concealed

underneath them.

his voice is not smooth when he sings, 
laughs and cries alike trapped in the unlit murkiness.

rather, he lays there, still as silence, among the forgotten.

a glassy gaze forever trying to see past the surface.

the sun illuminates his face.

he floats his words to the surface in a million bubbles,

waiting for someone to catch them.

he melts into water, form dissipating,

remnants of him buried.

he is waiting for me.

the way we were.

I remember when my father used to carry me up the stairs after I had fallen asleep on the living room floor. Next to the window I lay, watching the stars twinkle until I was lulled to sleep by the night's silence.

He carried me quietly, tiptoeing up the steps with my loose body in his arms. I always woke up when he reached the very top, but I never opened my eyes. I continued my feigned slumber and let him tuck me in because I knew it made him happy. He would support me with one shaky arm while pulling the covers back with the other. He laid me to rest and drew the blanket up almost to my neck. I kept my breathing steady as he brushed the hair from my face and placed it behind my ears.

When he retreated his hand, he would stand there for a time, not moving, maybe staring. He did nothing, but shortly after I would hear his footsteps and the click of the door closing. I was still, deathly still, until I was sure he had left and gone back downstairs.

I would sit up and slowly get out of bed, moving to the large window that overlooked the street. Opening it carefully, I climbed out onto the roof silently and sat directly in front of the window sill. The roof's slope was soft, so I didn't slide off. The old shingles rubbed against my pants, leaving pieces of themselves all over me. I tried not to shift my feet too much as any small movement made a gravelly type of noise that sounded a hundred times louder in the night.

Most nights, the boy from next door would join me till dawn, observing the sky and ground. All the houses in our neighborhood were not three feet from each other, allowing him to jump over to my roof from his with little effort. He sat close to me and sometimes we held hands. Together, we watched the road below, the street lamp and the flickering of house lights. The stars shimmered above us, scattered like glass on the sky and dimmed by the lights seeping from deep within the distant city.

To the left we could turn our heads and see the school. We were in the same class but didn't talk often. Only when we reached middle school did we really get to know each other. We walked to school on the foggy mornings together, and returned the same way. We sat, backs to our lockers at lunch time, sharing the food our mothers had packed for us.

On weekends, we bussed to the city and adventured around downtown all day. We got ice cream and window shopped. When we got tired, we would sit outside the coffee shop looking at people pass by and drinking iced black tea. He would laugh at the lady with a strange hat, the stern looking business man with a stained shirt, the child that tripped and cried. I would smile and examine his delicate laugh lines. He would say, 'Why is everyone in such a hurry?' while leaning back in his chair.

We usually arrived home at twilight and he would spend the night at my house. We laid on our sides, face to face on my narrow bed. I was pressed against the wall and we held hands. As we tried to fall asleep in the early hours of dawn, the sun glowed red through the venetian blinds and he sang in a hushed tone,

'Good night, good night,

The stars again,

Are shining so bright,

Sleep with no fear,

with good, happy dreams,

I'll still be here,

When morning comes,

I'll still be near,'

My eyes would slide shut and I would dream of him. When I woke up in the afternoon, he would be beside me dozing peacefully, our fingers still entwined. I pressed my forehead against his and listened to his rhythmic sighs. When he opened his eyes a short time later, we would make our way downstairs to eat and watch the sun shine through the kitchen window. We talked about anything, everything. Our family, our experiences, our interests, ourselves.

Nothing changed when we entered high school. We spent our first and second years much the same as we had for the longest time.

However, something was different in our third year. He had made more friends and even joined a club, I'm not sure which. At breaks and lunch time, I would sit outside or in the library and read. He stopped coming and I stopped bringing lunch.

On weekends, I wouldn't see him. I walked the city streets alone, or stayed home and counted the birds that landed in the trees. On nights I spent on the roof, I sat by myself and sometimes saw him come home late, strolling down the sidewalk and making his way to the front door of his house. I always wondered where he had been, what he had been doing, who he was with.

When we talked, it was about meaningless things. What we had learned in class, a book I read last week, the nice weather. I wondered when our conversations became so dull, when he had stopped being there, when I had stopped caring. When did we drift so far?

In March, a month from graduation, my father died.

He didn't come to the funeral. I saw the light from his room when I climbed up on the roof the night of the funeral. It was cold. My breath froze as I sang almost soundlessly,

'The stars again, are shining so bright,'

I could hear my mother crying through the open window of the bedroom that now belonged only to her. Sobbing, moving, breaking.

'I'll still be here,'

An ever bright moon shone a crescent above the trees, sometimes obscured by clouds that moved across the horizon. They were grey and wispy, edges illuminated. I shrugged off my suit jacket. It slid from me, down the roof and onto the grass, a black heap.

'When morning comes,'

He shut his curtains and his room went dark, I knew he had gone to sleep. My eyes watered and my throat became too tight. My voice was uneven and thick.

'I'll still be near. . .'

to remain?

'Son,' my father said, and I didn't turn my head. We were driving in the dark, the streetlights made dancing shadows on the seats, a constant pattern of light, dark, light, dark as we passed them. The shine of other car's headlights reached through the windshield to touch our faces, then disappeared. The heater was on full power, warming my feet, burning them, and it felt good. I squished my toes together in my boots to make my hot skin sting.

Resting against the window, I was a part of it. My hair, cheek, lips, melted into the glass and I was cold as the snow that flew past. My breath no longer fogging and condensing, but vanishing, my body slowly crystallizing.

'Son,' my father repeated, shattering the glass me. My eyes slid to the side and I saw his face, pointed directly forwards, concentrating on the road in front, not looking at me. The flickering patterns of the shadows gave him chilling angles on his nose, eyes and temples. I averted my gaze to the outside and had no choice but to answer. I tried to keep my voice as steady as possible.

'Yes?'

I could hear his head turn to look at me, the sound of his coat collar rubbing against his neck was sharp. I didn't want our eyes to meet so I kept my attention on the world outside the car. It flew by so quickly, I wanted to catch it. I could feel my father's stare, it was unsettling, like a stranger whispering in my ear.

'I hate you.'

To say I wasn't shocked would be a lie. But it wasn't the fact that he hated me that was surprising. I had known that since I was a child. However, that he had said it aloud caught me off guard completely. My father never expressed his opinion, or emotion, or anything for that matter. He wasn't like a cool, stony and stoic character from a book or movie, more so he was annoyingly hard to read. When he said anything, it was a command, devoid of any feeling.

I have always lived in uneasiness with my father. Avoiding his gaze, his touch, his few words, never allowing myself to have any attachment to him, emotional or otherwise. I'm a coward, never being able to stand up to him, to disagree or even say a thing back to him.

When he would stare sternly at me as I ate my food, looking for mistakes. I would shakily lift the food to my mouth, acutely aware of his gaze cutting into me and absolutely terrified of accidentally dropping something or dripping. He stared while he ate, and finally one time said,

'Don't hold your chopsticks like that, you're not a child anymore.'

His voice was smooth, cold, and it made me stop, stilled like a statue while still holding my bowl, my hand almost trembling. The way he had said it, as if purposely trying to point out a flaw, any flaw he could find, using a voice that could have paralyzed any man, prevented me from eating. And even to this day I cannot eat anything in his presence, avoiding him when he's home, only being able to enter the kitchen when I'm sure he's out.

That, and many other similar instances have caused me to hide from him whenever possible. Stealthily moving through the house, quietly, swiftly, ghosting the walls and halls so he doesn't notice my being there. Only facing him when it's necessary, only speaking when spoken to. Many times I have considered running away and I laugh at the fact that it would probably take him a week to notice my absence. Unfortunately, as I am now, a senior in high school with a low paying job at a twenty-four hour coffee shop, it would be impossible to continue living successfully away from home.

Despite all that, I had no choice but to agree when he had asked me, standing directly in front of me and glowering at my bowed head, to go with him for a drive. I didn't question his destination or reasoning for suddenly asking me, and because of that I had ended up in my current situation. A long known statement, a monster, and a good for nothing. All together in a car, driving driving driving, then stopped.

It took me a moment to realize he had parked the car. We sat on the shoulder of the road, not two metres from the brightly lit bridge that connected the two sides of the city split by a wide and violent river. It was black, but the city was reflected on the surface.

My father turned his body towards me and I could hear his jacket scrape against the car seat. I wanted to look at him, to see his expression, but all I could do was keep my eyes fixed on my hands rested in my lap. I heard a click, a metallic click. A gun's click.

'I'm going to shoot you now. I'm going to shoot you and I hope you die.'

There was a long pause. I gathered the courage to turn my head, slowly, very slowly. My eyes were unable to reach him before he pulled the trigger. He shot me in the stomach, not the head or heart, but near my stomach. The bullet went right through me and lodged in to the seat. I swallowed and felt blood move its way up my throat. I reached a shaky arm over to the door and opened it, leaving the vehicle to enter the cold outdoors. My father didn't stop me. He didn't say anything.

I took an unsteady step to the direction of the bridge, my arms encircling my midsection. I didn't feel anything except for the blood flowing out of me, staining my jacket and hands forever. I made my way onto the bridge gradually, carefully walking on the snow, looking out towards the other side of the city. I coughed once or twice, red dripping down my lips and chin, the blowing snowflakes and my hair sticking to it, making my face frozen and messy. I couldn't taste it.

I made it nearly halfway before I fell. My legs became weak and then crumbled, taking me with them. I didn't notice I had fallen till I felt ice caressing my forehead and cheeks, red mixing with white. I unwrapped my stiff arms and with great difficulty and pushed myself into a sitting postion, my back leaning on the bridge's railing. I was breathing hard now, my breath coming out as liquid and as fog. My hands lay limply by my sides, I grabbed snow and pebbles and dirt and death and squeezed them between my numb fingers.

I looked up, the lights shined so bright, blindingly, fragile flakes twirled in front of them. The landed on me, my eyelashes, my nose, my teeth, my heart. They were inside me, filling me with bitter frost. They spilled out red. I was dying. I knew this, and this brought about a pain, a searing pain, a crippling pain.

Nothing but pain. No sadness or regret or remorse or anger. Just simple pain, and it hurt. It hurthurthurtsomuchIcouldbarelystandit.

I wanted to cry, to feel warm tears on my face, but they came out cold. Cold and red and painful.

I was dying.

Dying,dying,dying,death,dead.

I don't want to die I don't want to die I don't wantIdon'twantIdon'twantIdon't

Death.

because i

i sometimes wondered what she was thinking

when she sat on the bed and watched me pretend to sleep

and i wondered if she loved me

and if she wanted to hurt me

and if she wanted to leave

and i wanted to ask her

but then

i wrapped my arms around her

around her

neck

and i straddled her and i

looked into her wide eyes

and i

smiled and

i thought that if we were to have sex we

would be doing it that way but my hands

my hands would be running up her torso

squeezing her breasts touching her stomach not

around her neck squeezing the breath out of her

and she gripped my wrists with her small

small hands her fingers are so pretty

and nails cut into me her legs

moved

under me

her smooth hair was splayed on the bed sheets getting

tangled getting disheveled her

eyes were wet and my eyes were wet too

and that wetness rolled off my cheeks

it hit her it fell onto her dress

and her forehead and into her mouth

and she choked on it and she

choked on my fingers

crushing her

and she

was crushed

and she stopped forever

and i stopped

but i kept moving and i'm not human anymore

and even in hell there's

no place for a thing such as me

there is no punishment long enough

in forever

for me

so i will live

i am alive

i live with my memory

of her and what i did to her and what i wanted to do with her

and she doesn't

and

never again

does she

so i am alone and and and end