The Venezuelan avocado grows oblong, blooming viridescent at the swell and contorting its body at an 80 degree angle; the flesh appears to convulse. Dreaming, Lucia saw a field of cicadas washed pale. The pit pulses. “—poor Sasha. Poor girls.” His collar twitched against his neck, rows of anchors raising and dropping when his vowels dipped or jaw stretched around his neckline. Ebbing. Lucia thought his coat was stupid. He flicked the knob of her cheek, “tus ojos son graciosos,” and stared at her. “Estoy escuchando, Daniel escuchando. I’m listening.” Lucia rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, hard. She saw stars of apricot. Daniel kept staring, eyes red and muzzy after spending the night listening to her carp in Spanglish about politics and the blue walls of her bedroom and Daniel stop …show more content…
Lucia left Daniel’s apartment after the third flick, the key to her family’s apartment bending in the catch of the door as she pulled. The room snarled at her as she entered, her grandmother and tío Camilo dancing toe-to-toe in a confused delirium of childish misunderstanding and exhausted reason. Hands waving and dusky like highlighters. People thought Lucia’s tío fue demente. She could deny it all she liked, but knew on certain days, maybe a couple of mornings when she and her grandmother returned from the Hispanic church near the store with sad looking girls in the window, his waterlogged brown eyes would look at her strangely. Camilo would forget who Lucia was, giving her those small, lopsided, I wasn’t expecting any company today smiles while stretching and pushing holes into the sleeves of his cardigan. “No se burlan de él,” his mother would tell Lucia, a little too much that it became a pattern. Don’t make fun. “He needs softness.” Scrubbing soggy avocado off of the decorative Christmas dining set with her