Migrations
By Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez
Chiara dreamed of their bird, its deep blue throat crying chit chit chit. Natalia grinned, slapping her palm excitedly against Chiara’s arm. It’s finally spring.
Together, the girls held their breath as the tiny creature’s long beak approached the feeder, flitting back and forth. Forward, backward, over and over. Chiara felt the whirring of the bird’s tiny wings first in her hair, then on her eyelids, and, finally, in her veins. Sickly sweet nectar rushed through her, an incursion of memory: Natalia weaving midnight satin through her braid after her breasts swelled and her hips widened; Natalia pursing her lips at Chiara’s childish closet. Chiara felt her dreams tugging, drawing her under. Suffocating.
She gasped for air. What is it? Natalia’s watched Chiara, then turned. She pointed her chin to the hummingbird: The blue from her throat’s spreading. See it dripping from her wings? She’s suffering. The bird winged into the horizon, vanished. Streaks of blue swelled and then faded into an evanescing sky. When Chiara turned, her friend had disappeared too.
This is how sleep felt: dreams that prowled, their hiss reverberating long after she opened her eyes. Never in her life had Chiara felt more like prey. She was vulnerable, alone in this world that demanded she exchange her childhood for womanly things.
Her body trembled in bathwater. Chiara hugged her knees to her chest. When she inhaled, the air tasted of ice cream. An urge to stick out her tongue—to lap up the air—overwhelmed her.
Even awake, blue encircled her limbs. Ribbons spiraled, rippling around her fingers. It did not come from her; it followed her. It followed her elbow as she dipped, flexed. It followed her toes as they curled around the silver chain and released the plug. It followed her entire body as she stood, concentrated cobalt around her shins. Chiara’s skin resisted the towel. She rubbed and rubbed, but stains remained.
As she slid on a sweatshirt, she tried to focus. Chiara inhaled: one, two, three, four, five. When she exhaled, she found herself wrapped in her mother’s blanket, tears spattered across woven patterns of childish longing. Her body perspired. As it seeped in, Chiara whimpered. Layers of skin, fat, muscle, tissue, bone: softened, detached.
Beckoning Natalia’s face, Chiara concentrated on the rise of her nose—the asymmetry of her chin—until the ink of mourning dripped blue too.
Whispers of buzzing wings echoed through her hollowing body—reverberating histories of two girls’ migrations—forward, backward, over and over again. Constellations of translucent memory beaded on the windowpane. Her heart took on a waxen blue beating. She tried to reach into herself—to yank it free, contemplate how it beat. Yet all she could feel were fingers combing through wet.
Natalia had told her to look up, study the sky. The snow burned her eyes and skin. She wanted to look away. It’s just water, Natalia scowled. Chiara gazed upward as Natalia explained that she couldn’t stay; she couldn’t bear to live under this sky—Chiara’s sky—any longer. Globes of rain distorted their goodbye. Don’t forget me.
Chiara envisioned the cerulean folds of Natalia’s dress—ribbons chasing after her friend’s whittled shape until all Chiara could see was an endless lake, growing fuller.
The humming of wings deafened Chiara’s senses. She understood the prowling of her dreams—the tireless, hungry search for what’s lost. Her body pooled into shapelessness. She examined her surroundings, sought an empty vessel—something with which her new liquid existence could fill. She yearned for some semblance of shape. For if she could not maintain a shape, she would wash away. She would disappear too.
THE END
Author Bio: Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez (she/her) resides in Colorado. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in the tiny journal, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Prose Online, Five Minutes, Pigeon Review, and elsewhere. Learn more about Adrianna at adriannasanchezlopez.com.