Carmen, 26
I was getting some flowers for my boss. It felt like a Thursday but maybe it was a Tuesday. She wasn’t sad or anything; she just wanted to brighten up the office. Air quality in New York, all of that. I got three white roses from Cesar at the flower shop. He was spray painting them white. He saw me spraying and maybe self-consciously he said, “Nobody notices.” He asked me about my mother. He was ringing me up when the flowers started getting loud. Déjà vu is when your mind is remembering something as it’s happening, right? It usually happens when you’re really tired or depressed, I think. The flowers were loud and I felt like I had been there before. Many, many times. As different people, almost. Then the flowers started to shake. I heard a choking sound. A screaming sound. A sound that’s like someone chasing after the person they love because they dropped their wallet but that person is already blocks and blocks away and that person has already put her headphones in. My face was wet. Cesar, too. We hugged. We said “Sorry,” but we didn’t know why. Then I went away.
Junot, 52
I saw her. I did. It was like I peeked inside of a can of Café Bustelo and just found a beating heart spouting out period blood. Like I woke up next to a cat purring beside me and when I reached to pet it, all this human hair came off in my hand and all the human hair was mine. Like I tried to jerk off but my dick was just the edges of paper and it gave me little cuts on my hands. Like I saw a beautiful woman walking down the street, a really beautiful one right, with tits that were laughing at me through her paper-thin shirt and an ass that was fighting out of her jeans and hair that was flapping behind her like a black broken wing and when I went to look behind me there was just a big gaping hole in the air, a wet open mouth whispering or screaming or moaning at me, asking me to come closer and tell her what would come next.
The celebrities are gone now,
gracias a Dios.
No one could handle the drama.
No one knows who brought
them back or how. It fizzes away.
On to the next chisme.
She doesn’t text or tweet or take a picture.
Some things are better to let
wilt in your memories, mami.
We wish we could tell her that.
But we think she knows now.
It’s not like
the two of them
can go back to the way
that it was.
She didn’t manipulate
time.
She brought
the dead back, then
returned them.
But the You?
What are the consequences
for this trade?
Will the You be jet-lagged
from the afterlife?