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If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this novella from the beginning (link here).

My wife’s accusatory glare and weaponized tongue,
Carrying years of racked-up bitterness,
Jabbed, punched, kicked, stabbed.
She flayed me inch by excruciating inch.

You’re a grown man. Stop moping around.
Get off the fucking pity wagon.
Since the beginning, did you have zero intention
Of being fully committed to this marriage?
I gave up law to be a housewife. Am I not enough?
Oh, forgive me for interrupting your endless reveries.
While you’re busy mourning your teenage sweetheart,
I’m here, flesh and blood,
Holding together the family you keep forgetting.
Are you satisfied tormenting me and our child
Because you refuse to let that girl go?
Why do I need to measure up to an idealized teenager?
How is it possible that someone you dated
Fifteen fucking years ago,
Who doesn’t even exist anymore,
Matters more to you than your wife,
The mother of your own fucking kid?

My lovely wife had a lawyer’s soul:
She saw every argument as a chance
To uncover flaws in logic,
To chip away at the opponent’s stance,
To claim the victor’s glory.
As for me, beaten and battered,
I had become a ragdoll
Growing threadbare by the day.

Whenever I anticipated the acidic talk,
I cowered inside my besieged mind,
Clutching at the crumbling battlements,
Lacking the strength to yell at her, or beg her,
To shut the fuck up.
My wife, along with her vindictive glare,
Elbowed her way into my memories of you
To contaminate that sanctuary,
And every time she brought you up,
A pang rippled through my scar tissues,
Echoing, “You’re dead, you’re dead.”

Getting married, sharing an apartment,
Should have provided a traveling companion
With whom to endure this lonesome life.
Instead, I spent my energies erecting walls
To shield my gangrenous heart,
And to muffle any human utterance
Until it became incomprehensible noise.
I felt like I had invested my adulthood
Anticipating a visit to a luminous city,
Saving up and planning meticulously,
Only to arrive at a filthy, ruinous dump
Infested with vermin.

I had surrendered control
Of my meat-and-bones vessel
To someone who didn’t respect me,
Who exploited and mistreated me.
I wished a yawning chasm
Would swallow my wife,
My apartment, this city,
But the mirror of time showed
My stooped figure decades older:
A stammering, browbeaten coward
Just like my father.

My wife was loading the dishwasher
When she casually spewed an attack
That I recognized by its acidic tone,
Even though I had blocked the content.
This time, instead of keeping quiet,
I told her to turn around and listen.
She froze, then straightened up,
Closed the dishwasher with her hip,
And faced me, arms folded,
Her gaze fixed upon me
Like the muzzle of a revolver.

“Each morning since April 27, 1999,
I wake up to the absence of the person
Who made living worthwhile.
You’ve never lost anyone dear,
So you cannot possibly grasp
This grief that has eroded me daily.
You’re frustrated because I have failed
To measure up to your ideal husband,
But I’m the man that remains,
And though I stumble, I’m here,
Doing the best I can with what’s left.
Countless times I’ve wanted to die,
But I chose to keep going for you,
And for our son, who deserves a father.”

“Stop neglecting our family by prioritizing
Your unhealthy fixation with that girl.”
“Do you think I have a choice?”
“Get a fucking therapist. Take antidepressants.”
“Should I erase her, then? Pay to have her scrubbed?”
“You act as if she were the love of your life,
Even though she ruined you.”

Her words had shotgunned my ribcage.
I breathed slowly to quell the shaking rage.
“Maybe love and ruin are interchangeable.
You know, when I agreed to marry you,
I had hoped for a lifelong partner
Who would inspire and encourage me,
Who wouldn’t insist on harassing me
Over the most traumatic event of my life,
Who would provide even a fraction of the joy
That Izar gifted me by simply existing.”

On the opposite side of the kitchen island,
The skin around my wife’s eyes tightened
As her lawyerly mind analyzed my words
For openings, inconsistencies, weaknesses.
Amid the tension, an out-of-place noise:
The creak of our son’s bedroom door.
Drowning out my wife’s bitter tirade,
I imagined his small heart pounding.
Behind that door, a wary creature
Hoped to escape notice.

That evening, I ventured into his bedroom,
Whose walls were a galaxy of space paraphernalia.
My son, reclined against the pillows,
As the glow of the bedside lamp
Illuminated his focused features,
Lost himself in a novel titled “Ender’s Game.”

He tilted his face upward at me as if I were a sun
Failing to warm his frozen planet.
Those glasses magnified deep-set eyes
Whose gaze held mine warily.
“I read that one back in middle school,” I said,
“And I remember enjoying it quite a bit.”
“It’s good,” he said,
Then refocused on the page.

How could I, a ruined man, improve my son’s life?
Instead of training him to carry on into the future,
To survive despite crushing unhappiness,
Perhaps I should abandon him,
Let his resilient mother forge ahead
Without the burden of my misery.

Izar, if this child had belonged to us,
How would you have nurtured him?
You, the sun I revolved around.
You, who had taught me what it meant
To make the best of a crumbling world.

My son and I rode on leg-powered bikes
Past the ruins of Roman furnaces.
Our pedals and chains clicked rhythmically.
On the muddy path beneath our tires,
Gravel crunched and stray twigs snapped.
Puddles from recent rainfall mirrored
The dove-gray cloud cover
And arching, naked branches.
A blanket of fallen leaves blurred
The boundaries of the unpaved path
Flanked on our left by an ancient wall:
A mosaic of weathered, moss-daubed stones.
The mist that hung in the air cooled my lungs.

We reached a fork in the trail
Where a slope would force us to dismount
And push our mountain bikes uphill
While seeking purchase on exposed stones.
“Let’s head up there,” I said.
My son, as he readjusted his helmet,
Shot me a skeptical look.
“Where does it lead?”
I got off my bike.
“I don’t know.”

A meandering dirt path, worn by footsteps
But now reclaimed by nature,
Opened to a clearing of greens and browns
Where square, one-story buildings stood,
Their once-white walls aged, stained,
And half-conquered by creeping ivy.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be here,” my son said.
I stopped and listened to the chirping birds,
To the distant creaking of branches,
But no one had claimed these ruins.
“Let’s explore,” I said.

We were rolling our bikes through the garden
Of a family gone for decades.
An anonymous hand had gathered stones
To form the sinuous banks of a stream.
Water rippled, reflecting dapples of sunlight.
Wide-leafed plants, unique in these woods,
Still blossomed white, bell-like flowers.
Beside the stream, on a filthy, pitted wall,
An intact grill guarded a window opening
That gaped like a hollow eye.

My son followed cautiously.
“How old do you think this place is?”
“It belongs to the Roman era.”
“C’mon, dad. Romans lived, like,
A thousand years ago.”
“More like two thousand.”
“Mom would scold us if she saw us
Wandering around abandoned places.”
“No doubt. But she doesn’t have to know.”
“Imagine if we owned this secret space,
And transformed it into a hideout.”
“These days? They would take it from us.”
“What if zombies attacked now?”
“We should have brought baseball bats.”
“I bet if I had a machine gun,
I’d blast every last one of them.”
“Good luck convincing mom to buy that.”

We let the bikes fall into a patch of tall grass,
Then we entered the roofless, derelict house.
Its floor was carpeted with dried leaves
That crackled under our sneakers.
Against the inner walls and their peeling paint,
Someone had arranged piles of chipped bricks,
Remnants of moss-cloaked furniture,
Rusted mattress springs.
Logs lay scattered, their bark mottled.
Weeds had sprung up all around,
Thriving amid the detritus.
I inhaled the scent of moist soil and tetanus.

At the end of the garden stood a woodshed
Stacked with logs shrouded in grimy cobwebs
Like antediluvian bones in a catacomb.
Decades ago, the owner picked these logs,
Hand-chopped them, and stored them as fuel
For fires that would never come.

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Author’s note: the songs for today are “Swan Dive” by Waxahatchee, and “Cosmic Love” by Florence + the Machine.

• Previous part (11)
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If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short story (or novella) from the beginning (link here).

Lunch break at last, I sat in the shade
Beneath broadleaved guardians.
My Izar, I’m here once again.
Come join me, hold my hand.
The world’s jagged edges softened
As your gentle light enveloped me.
Did your day treat you well?
Anything you want to share?
You’ve gotten hooked on a new manga?
Oh, I’d love to hear all about it.

On my commute home from work,
My eyes closed to shut the world out,
As I swayed to the train’s rhythm,
And the song of rain and thunder
Poured in through my headphones,
I felt your fingers caressing mine,
Tracing my knuckles and creases.

The morning light streaming
Through my bedroom window
Spilled into the open wardrobe,
Gilding the hanging garments,
Ranging from T-shirts to sweaters,
Whose hems were draped over the lid
Of the sturdy moving box
That enshrined your remains.

I caressed the rough, corrugated cardboard
That had cradled you for more than a decade.
With my family out to play at the park,
I heaved the box onto the marital bed.
When I peeled back the lid, you grinned
Through photos taken in the nineties.
I held hands with your motorcycle gloves.
As I listened to our pretend radio shows,
I laughed, and tears streaked my cheeks.

Izar, the things that bind us,
They are the only lasting truths.
Although your body turned to ashes,
Your name remains carved within me,
Inscribed inside my organs,
Scratched on my bones,
With every cell echoing it.
Once we are stripped of our shells,
Love is all we will carry.

On a stormy night, the beddings’ warmth
Had coaxed my wife into a snore-heavy sleep.
The wind battered the windows,
And raindrops tap-tapped incessantly.
I lay on the opposite side of the bed,
But in my mind I had returned to my old room,
Whose bed you and I had shared.
As we clung to each other,
And my fingertips skated up and down
The ladder rungs of your vertebral bumps,
I buried my face in the crook of your neck,
Where I sniffed your aroma:
Sunshine, cinnamon, motor oil.
We had woven our way into each other
By learning one another’s shapes,
What each vocalization meant,
What brought pleasure or pain.

Your warm lips brushed my earlobe.
“I missed you so much, you know.”
Izar, tell me when you want to leave,
And I will follow you anywhere.
Just say the word.
“Hey, Cap’n. I wanna ask something.
How long would it take to die from drowning?”
Drowning? You mean falling into a river?
“No, like jumping off a cliff.
Is it true you can’t scream underwater?”

My wife had been avoiding me since that morning,
But I traced the stench of cigarette to the balcony,
Where I found her shrouded in her wool robe,
Seated with one bare leg crossed over the other,
Defiantly exposing her skin to the biting breeze.
A thread of smoke rose from the cigarette
Clenched between her index and middle fingers
As her gaze pierced through the landscape
To wander in some faraway place.

I asked her if anything was the matter.
She shot a sidelong glance at me.
The cigarette’s cherry flared orange
As she sucked on the foul stick’s vileness.
The taps of pedestrians five stories below,
Along with the hum of passing vehicles,
Accented the tension in her silence.
When I was about to insist,
She exhaled a grayish-white cloud,
Then said I had been talking in my sleep.

“You apologized to your teenage girlfriend,
And called her name over and over.
The other stuff, I don’t even want to bring up!”
I asked her if she also expected an apology.
My wife crushed the stub on the ashtray,
And demanded to be left alone.
What, should I repent for unconscious outbursts?
During my waking hours, around my wife and son,
I sealed my burbling depths with a hermetic lid,
And I behaved like a functional family man,
Or at least tried my damnedest;
In dreams, my subconscious probed the abyss,
Prodding, scratching, licking the scar tissue
For signs of fresh bleeding.

I still remembered the adult grace
With which my wife, then a legal advisor,
Dressed in blouses and thigh-length skirts,
Had approached the business park bench
Where I reminisced away my lunch break.
The first time her legs halted beside me,
I had wanted to peel off her stockings.
Contrast that with her now-slouched shoulders,
And her lips pressed into a thin line
Whenever her hardened gaze scrutinized
The guilty half of our legal arrangement,
Ready to dissect any sign of laziness; of failure;
Of straying toward you, the forbidden.

Why the hell did I choose for myself a life
In which an inspector could interrupt
My worship of you anytime,
And interrogate me about my devotion?
Since you died, I had yearned to return,
In flesh or spirit, to our teenage bubble,
When I could still smile,
And the time was ours to live.

My wife and I weren’t right for each other:
We had been forged in different furnaces,
Hammered into incompatible shapes.
When she had pursued my broken self,
I doubted my strength to endure
Decades of solitary penance.
I had craved someone to lean on,
Who might try to understand.
If only I had rejected her advances,
And remained the shell of a teenager,
I’d be living in a one-bedroom home
Furnished with a computer, a mattress,
And the moving box of your relics.
Your voice would play full-volume at all hours.

For the sake of our child,
Whom we had dragged into the harsh lights
Of this indifferent cosmos,
I would continue living a lie.

In the time between work and work,
Resting on my bench sanctuary
While the overhead leaves rustled,
Sketchbook perched on my knees,
Headphones clamped tight,
And your voice bleeding into my brain,
With a sharpened tip of graphite,
I etched the outline of your curves:
The slender breasts that fit in my palms,
The belly swollen with our baby,
And the thighs that loved to hug my face.
I shaded the heaven between them,
Where I had gladly lost my sense of self
Tasting the tang of sea salt,
Drowning in your intimate waves.

One night, after reading a tale to my son,
I entered the master bedroom to find my wife
Waiting for me at the foot of the bed,
Straight-backed and stiff-necked,
Naked except for black cotton lingerie
Embellished with lace embroidery;
Hands clasped in front of her navel
As if to conceal the tortuous stripes.
She instructed me to lock the door.

In the sultry dampness of her mouth,
My penis went flaccid.
She withdrew and gaped at my failure
Before wiping her glistening lips.
“What the hell is wrong?”
“I’m sorry. I’m tired.”
My wife rose swiftly.
With a voice edged in hurt,
She accused, “I disgust you, don’t I?”
Then stormed out, retreating to the bathroom.
As for me, slumped on the edge of the bed
With my limp, shriveled member exposed,
I rubbed the bridge of my nose.
A minute later, I slid under the covers,
Shoved earplugs in, and hoped for sleep.

To celebrate the anniversary of my first kiss with you,
That interrupted a playthrough of Resident Evil
And signaled the start of our romance,
I splurged on a bakery cake,
And, unbeknownst to my wife,
I took a personal day from work
So you and I could spend the whole morning together.

I cradled the cake box, my precious offering,
To the woodsy depths of the Meaka neighborhood,
Strolling along a narrow, cracked, cement path
Encroached on both sides by grass and weeds.
The fresh air smelled of pine, earth, and wildflowers.
The birds trilled, the leaves whispered, a creek babbled.
A butterfly chased its mate’s erratic trajectory.

I reached the spot next to the winding path:
A picnic grove canopied by verdant trees.
Sunlight cascaded through the webwork of branches
And spilled shimmering patches of gold
Upon my chosen picnic table, rugged and gritty,
That bore names, hearts, and curses
Carved by generations of lovers and drunks.
I settled at the wooden table, my back to the path.
As I breathed in peace, my heartbeat slowed;
Nobody would disturb this solitude
To chastise me for loving you.

I laid the cake box before me, and flipped the lid.
Chocolate layers emulated a muddy racetrack,
With ganache frosting mimicking earthtones,
And intricate icing recreating tire streaks.
On top stood an edible sculpture:
A fondant motocross bike painted yellow.
Wouldn’t you have gotten a kick out of my offering?
In your translucent likeness, seated opposite,
Sunlight shining through, I glimpsed a beaming grin.
“Dude, you’re awesome. This is, like, the coolest cake.”

“You know,” I said, “it’s the anniversary of our first kiss.
We played Resident Evil and, while you were cheering,
I kissed you by surprise. Do you remember?”
“Hell yeah, I do. You thought you were being smooth,
But I totally knew you’d kiss me, so I was ready.
I was dying to kiss you back.”
“Izar, if I went back in time and prevented your death,
What would you do?”
“Dude, I would kiss you until your lips bled.”

I lit a candle shaped like a number one,
And anchored it beside the fondant bike.
“Happy kiss anniversary, Izar.”
I cut a slice, then dug a forkful.
In the flickering light of that lone flame,
Chocolate and cream melted on my tongue.
I savored the blend of rich flavors
And delighted in the textures
Of velvety ganache, smooth frosting,
And the crumbly patches imitating dirt.

Another year with you, my thoughtless girl,
Who had tossed the die without regard
To what your demise might unleash,
Leaving the heart that adored you dead.
As for my wish, I hoped that both of us
Would plunge into a bottomless lake
And hold hands while we sank,
Until the weight of water crushed us,
And everything turned black.

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Author’s note: today’s songs are “Sally Cinnamon” by The Stone Roses, and “Heroin” by The Velvet Underground.

You may be wondering if I have changed the title of this story. Nope, just a case of the Mandela effect. Now seriously, I did change the damn title for reasons that I probably shouldn’t bother explaining, but that for some reason will: while “Love of My Life” refers both to the song that sparked this story as well as to the unending grief that the narrator endures, that title didn’t capture the remaining oddity of this tale, from the unrealistic dream of Izar Lizarraga to the increasingly hallucinatory tone of the story. “Love of My Life” makes one picture a straight romance, while “Motocross Legend, Love of My Life” could make one stop and wonder about the strange pairing. You know, assuming anybody cares. Anyway, I just prefer it like this.

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If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short story (or novella) from the beginning (link here).

During my fifteen minutes of quiet,
A respite from scrubbing greasy dishes,
Folding laundry, tidying up toys,
And chasing after a toddler who found joy
In turning the apartment upside down,
I retreated to our fifth-floor balcony,
And tried to settle into the bistro-style chair.
A pair of seagulls whirled over the rooftops.
I took a deep breath of the afternoon chill,
Bracing myself to confront my scarred wounds.

On the table, I rested the old tape recorder,
Already obsolete by the late nineties.
I flipped my sketchbook to a blank page,
And beside it I lined up my graphite pencils.
I adjusted the headphones to eclipse the world,
Then dared to press play on the recorder,
Inviting you in.

Your brisk teenage voice, vibrant and infectious,
Hit my insides like a rock smashing
Through a frozen lake.
An ache surged, a relentless wave,
That threatened to ravage the shores of my self
With memories too potent to withstand.

“Welcome back, stellar listeners,
To another thrilling episode of ‘Izar’s Takeover.’
I’m Izar, your DJ and host, accompanied
By the one, the only, Captain of the Cosmos!”
“Hey, folks. Who do we have beaming in
For today’s intergalactic interview?”

My fingers reacquainted themselves
With the textures of the pencil,
An extension of my nervous system,
While the fifteen-year-old cassette
Hissed and crackled.

“Hold onto your space helmets!
Today, we’re delving deep into the psyche
Of the fierce, formidable Asuka Langley,
A.K.A. the Crimson Devil,
Ace pilot of Evangelion Unit-02,
And defender of the Tokyo-3 Geofront!
Let’s find out Asuka’s favorite color,
Whether she prefers coffee or beer,
And why she has no friends.”
My teenage self pulled back.
“W-wait, I’m doing Asuka?”
Your giggles rippled the channels of time.
“Yeah, come on, do the prime tsundere.
I’ve noticed the way you stare at her.”
“Don’t make me sound creepy.”

Now that your voice carried me,
My hand drifted of its own accord,
Combining graphite with paper
And fading daylight.

My teenage self deepened his voice.
“Favorite color? Blood-red, of course.
Drinks? Coffee, when it’s arabica;
Beer, if it’s brewed in Germany.”
Struggling not to crack up, you asked,
“And friends?”
“I’ll have you know, Izar-chan,
Everyone else is an inferior specimen
Unworthy of my company.”
“Asuka, are you a cat or a dog person?”
“Penguin. Duh.”
“How many nipples does Eva-02 have?”
“Uh… three? Maybe four?”

“Asuka, you’re famed across the cosmos
For your skill in a biomechatronic superweapon,
But what drives you to stand atop as the best?”
“I must be the best! If not, then who am I?
My strength is all I have.”
“Beneath that tsundere exterior,
Your heart cares deeply, doesn’t it?
What truly motivates the Crimson Devil?”
“I fight to protect pathetic losers
Like my family of plug-suited nimrods.
But deeper than that, I fight for a world
Worth existing in, worth loving,
One where nobody has to feel alone.”

I pushed the stop button,
Cutting off a teenage voice.
My aging hand holding the pencil trembled
As my heartbeat pounded in my ears.
On the page, the contour of your face,
Along with the shape of your eyes,
Your nose, and your parted lips
Smiling mischievously,
Had manifested
As if through a blinding whiteout.

What had we been, Izar?
A boy and a girl, alone together.
Too bright, too bold, too brave.
A nova, a celestial collision.
The blood in our veins
Had flowed in a single stream.

A gaze bored into me like a needle.
My wife, wrapped in a bathrobe,
Loomed in the balcony doorway.
I slid off the headphones, then stared back
Wrung dry, with my scars peeled open.

“Have you forgotten to buy cake mix?” she asked.
After recovering from the jarring intrusion,
I retrieved the crumpled grocery list from the garbage.
“Well, maybe I didn’t write it down,” she said,
“But I definitely told you about needing cake mix.
Run down to the store and get it, please.”
How come the moment I could finally rest,
Some chore sprung up, one that couldn’t wait?

In a dream, my lawyer-wife’s belly
Grew and shrunk in rapid cycles.
She carried her organs bundled in her arms:
A bloody tangle of intestines,
A pulsing brain,
A heart-shaped piece of coal.
Dream-her, scowling, rebuked me.
“You seem like a high school student
Posing as an adult,
Trying to take responsibility
For the mess you’ve created.”

Dream-her must have taken notes
From the ghost of my wife I conjured up
In daydreams, to build up my defenses
Against forthcoming arguments.
In the realm of matter, we merely coexisted:
Two planets orbiting a toddling star,
Exhausted by their revolutions.
Yet, both of them, my wife and son,
Demanded all my energy and focus,
As if the cramped quarters of my soul
Hadn’t been filled to capacity
By the specter of you.

Some days, I forgot you were dead;
Your laughter echoed through our home
To fade as a ringing in my ears.
Other days, a frigid wave of sorrow crashed
And drowned my surroundings in darkness,
Submerging me to a depth where time slowed,
And light could no longer penetrate.

The nocturnal breeze chilled my face
As I clutched the balcony railing.
To my left, a dark-gray road
Lined with bare-branched trees,
Their limbs stretching upward,
Sliced through apartment buildings
Toward Juncal Church, whose steeple,
Etched against Mount Jaizkibel,
Towered over the Roman museum.
The church’s clock face reflected
A sky punctuated by dazzling stars.

You stood in my periphery,
Hands jammed in your jacket pockets,
Your silhouette rimmed in starlight.
To succeed in our elopement
And fulfill the wish from a decade ago,
To flee this pain-burdened city
Where all I did was waste away,
I only needed to grab your warm hand,
And jump from this fifth-floor balcony
Into the hard asphalt below.
The world would vanish in a puff,
And we would drift upward and upward
To that ocean of forever,
Where we’d get to play among the stars.

I dreamt of our last moment together.
The amber glow of streetlights
Swirled like auroras in the rain-laced air.
You parked in front of the candy shop.
Drenched under the torrential barrage,
We clambered off and removed our helmets.
The taste of rain mingled with your saliva
While the Aprilia’s idling engine rattled
Like a hiker hopping from foot to foot,
Eager to move on.

We wished each other good night.
Thunder growled as you straddled
Your gleaming yellow-and-white bike.
You pulled on your helmet,
Gripped the handlebars,
Lifted the side stand with a kick,
Leaned forward, and twisted the throttle.
Your Aprilia roused with a throaty roar,
Then sped into the rain-engulfed night.

My chest strained with the weight
Of the countless combinations of words
I could have uttered back then
To save your life.

Had I insisted on accompanying you,
We might have woven ourselves into the night,
Resting in the refuge of your childhood bed,
Immersed in each other’s warmth.
Or we might have crashed on the highway,
Where we would have drawn rain-flecked gasps
Lying shattered on the bloodied grass
Amid scrap metal and broken glass.
Either way, I wouldn’t have left you alone.

At the Mount Igueldo amusement park,
A pine tree cast its dappled shade
Upon person-sized mushroom sculptures
With dot-speckled red caps,
And stout stems featuring cartoon faces.
Amid the mushrooms, fairy-tale gnomes
Stood brandishing shovels and pickaxes,
Caught in eternal toils.

Along the tracks, the train came crawling,
Its design imitating a bygone steam locomotive
Painted sky blue, sunny yellow, and candy red.
As the train passed in front of the mushrooms,
My wife, encapsulated in that vibrant world,
Leaned toward our son seated beside her.
“Look who it is, honey. Wave to daddy.”
My beaming boy recognized me as his father,
A beacon in this unfathomable universe,
And waved exuberantly.
A pang tore through me,
But I raised my hand to reciprocate
With a smile bolted onto my face.
If I were living the life intended for me,
I would have never met this family.

One Friday evening, in the living room,
Our toddler, sitting on a playmat
Amid a disarray of plastic blocks,
Replicated his giraffe plush toy
Drawing on a dry-erase board.
My wife and I, slumped on the couch,
Settled on the escape of fast food.
She suggested Chinese,
But in my mind, a hole had opened
Into the vault of memories,
And I remembered a scarlet polo shirt.
I insisted on ordering pizza,
Then looked up the number of that shop
Located downtown, beyond the bridge
That spanned the railroad tracks,
In the sloping Lope de Irigoyen Street,
Where you delivered pizzas
For money and adrenaline
Back when we were teens.

After placing the order, I couldn’t sit still.
I roamed the apartment,
Drank water only to drink more,
Splashed my face at the bathroom sink.
Anxiety built up in my chest,
Sweat beaded on my brow.
I saw you hanging out in front of the shop,
Chatting animatedly with the other drivers.
Once the cooks had finished baking,
You put on your scarlet cap,
Loaded the pizza into the cargo box,
Then rode the scooter across Irún,
Heading to my home.

The buzzer startled me.
I checked the monitor:
The building’s front door swung shut.
A minute later, the doorbell rang.
Heart lodged in my throat,
A foolish and fraying part of me
Hoped against everything I knew
That time would fold upon itself.
I stumbled to the entrance,
Paused, took a shaky breath,
And peered through the peephole.
There you stood, sixteen again,
Clad in the scarlet cap and polo shirt,
Balancing a pizza box on your palm.

My heart sputtered back to life,
And I threw the door open.

As I gazed into those chocolate eyes,
A wave of vertigo swept over me.
Your mouth stretched in a grin,
Exhibiting crooked front teeth.
“One family-size pepperoni pizza.”
Your youthful voice pierced my ribcage
And stirred the liquifying viscera.

You offered the hot cardboard box,
That smelled of burnt crust and grease.
I realized I held bills.
Your caramel ponytail swayed
As you fished into your fanny pack,
But when you extended the change,
I closed your fingers around the coins
With my larger, trembling hand.
“Oh, that’s my tip?” you chirped.

A lump welled up in my throat,
One I couldn’t swallow nor breathe past.
“Enjoy your pizza, sir,” you said,
Then tipped your cap as a goodbye,
And trotted down the stairs.

My lips quivered.
The back of my eyeballs burned.
The pizza box tilted downward
And thudded onto the floor.
I hunched over and covered my face.
The dam containing a lifetime’s laughter
Creaked, cracked, and burst.

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Author’s note: today’s songs are “K” by The Clientele, and “Diez años después” by Los Rodríguez.

If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.