Monique Quintana
COLD HOUSE: A SPACE OPERA IN FIVE ACTS
Knowing what I know now of harps, I commission the dolphins to play them until you arrive. Knowing what I know now of turpentine, I commission the dolphins to paint a hollow apple brined with kelp, a gesture to bring us the brink of forgiving. It's not safe to swim there. It's not safe to swim there. It's not safe to swim there? It is not safe to swim here. Turn back until the music stops. Until it stays lodged in your throat like the taste of forbearance, like the taste of negative balance. Don't forget how hard it used to be before you knew of their existence, of their wailing seeds to place where saltwater meets freshwater, like a star core.
My sister makes her dress fly to pick berries and talk to her lover at the same time. Our ancestors interrupt us to say they don't want us to multitask but to focus on one thing at a time. I go over these rules repeatedly as I pluck the rest of our meal out of root water. We are both self-centered to pass the quiz and hover over the bubble of our love. I want to build a house for the two of us, but then again, wandering can be good for us as we carry our bowls past the vapor to hear roaches harp beautifully. We use to revile them, but now we treat them as almost deities, knowing how indestructible they are. If only we could live so small and so tender.
Gunning to make a soup that will last until spring comes, my father prides himself on the fact that that the brown man in the Donner Party refused to eat flesh. This is where I always start first, with the boys in my house. Oh, bone, how do you transform into iron shoots? How does your heart pump faster than the fish swim at night when the snowfall reaches its coldest peak? The whole lot of them was forsaken because of the Mexican War, and here we have a war with ourselves.
There's a reoccurring story of my mother and your mother and their mother hitchhiking and getting conned. We still let the stars trick out of loving each other with milk. The value of their clay cups has gone up in this store. We find their belongings on the shelves. We make a mockery of all it knows, placing their ache in cold plastic baskets, rocking to the sound of tangerine fuel and coin exchange machines. Each piece of silver features their faces, each face in a plastic bubble. We shake them and begin to recognize ourselves. The way our hair grows amends.
I buy the cold leather cuffs to wrap around the hair I cut off. They float there in the empty space because my hair is gone. In that zero space, there are clouds hungry for caves to hide from people. We're clouds now, separated from each other. If you were to meditate on my stubbornness, what number would you land on? Where would you pin the tail on the donkey? Our animals bray at night to help us find our way back from tiny gestures. Idols try to soothe me to sleep to no avail. I ponder my family's racetrack horses. With open palms now, I try to pull the grain from the bucket to feed, but it keeps falling out like dust.