Status Updates From Catalina

“I lived in the real world, and the real world was sad. He lived in literature, and literature was beautiful.”

The therapist was going to just say this was about my dead parents and my dead uncle, maybe my aunt who was still alive in Ecuador doing this and that without me, eating salad and going for haircuts and knitting in front of the news. I was too cute and smart and interesting to have been damaged by such low-hanging fruit, could you imagine?

Everything that moved my flesh was typically in the minor tones, cumbias, boleros, the Hava Nagila, the Locrian mode in Björk. But I had not yet tried tenderness from a man who hadn't hurt me. I had not yet tried having my tears kissed away by a starry-eyed boy with beautiful hair. I had not yet tried E major in the spring. That I had not tried.

Like the other Facebook photo albums dedicated to his travels, this one was titled something in Spanish. La tierra del olvido. In his hands, Spanish had the aesthetic appeal of raw chicken, the liminal monstrosity stuck between a frightened animal and a date-night roast chicken.