The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert Read Online Free PDF

living room. I started by taking the markers and writing “NO” along the doors and the walls. I wrote a giant “NO” on his stomach and he woke up. I filled the room over and over with the word “NO.” He asked me what I was doing. I’m a kid, I said. I’m a kid. I screamed it. I showed him the photos I drew of his head. I unzipped my backpack and uncapped the jug of blue tempera paint. I poured it on the mattress and soaked the carpet and my hands. I tossed the empty container across the room. He tried to touch me and I screamed “NO.” I took the red tempera paint and I poured it on myself. I took the yellow and I stomped on the container. The yellow paint flowed out as my mom opened the door to the apartment.
    In memories of Colorado, my mother is missing. I ride around the apartment complex on a yellow and orange tricycle. My sister Vero is cleaning the apartment and tells me to stay out until she’s done. She’s playing songs by a woman named Alanis. I know the lyrics because she’s played the album over and over. As I sing along, the anger I can gather from my own voice pushes me to pedal faster and faster until I can no longer feel gravity.
    I kept to myself. I collected ladybugs in a cake pan. Mud was the first layer. Grass was the second. I marked lines across and vertically and placed each ladybug into a numbered quadrant. I placed a window screen over the pan and left the ladybugs out overnight. The next morning, some of them died, others were barely alive. I wanted to tell my sister. I wanted to demand a funeral. I dumped the farm behind the apartment complex and prayed for the struggling ladybugs to continue their lives without me.
    Vero said I needed religion so, she asked the upstairs neighbors for help. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses. The youngest boy was partnered with me. He read from a mustard yellow book and asked me about the morals of every story. I told him I didn’t care. I only wanted to play Killer Instinct . His eyes widened and he told me he could beat the game without losing a life. I asked him to prove it and he did. We ate waffle shaped cereal and played video games instead of reading from the mustard book.
    Summer was over and school started again. I was pulled aside for tutoring. Spanish was my first language, but not the official language for the school system. The tutor held flashcards up for the words “heavy” and “light” and asked me to repeat after her. The word “light” confused me. I didn’t understand how the feather in the picture brought me light. All I could think about was whether or not the white feather was plucked from a bird or if someone happened to find it in the grass.
    I had dreams of my mother. She took me to Zacatecas. On cobblestone roads, we rode the bus to a women’s prison. The prison was lit by candles. My mother held my hand and then gave me away to a woman in a cell. I had dreams of the blonde man being dragged into luminous rooms. When I tried to look inside, I only saw buildings collapsing into moths.
    Winter covered Denver in fluffy snow. I waited at the bus stop in my psychedelic purple windbreaker. I swore I could see the individual patterns of the snowflakes before they melted into my palms. This was around the time I believed leprechauns could be captured in cups of glue and glitter. It was around the time a girl defended me by lying to the class. Someone came up and punched me in the chest. That was the lie. I was accused of being infatuated with a boy. I sobbed into my hands. The injustice I felt came from alienation. I was the new girl in class. They didn’t even know me.
    Winter led me to build my first snowman. He was short and lumpy. I named him Arturo. I stayed with Tía Lola who collected my baby teeth and put me in karate class. She lived with her girlfriend Isabella, who cackled while dancing at birthday parties and at men who were afraid of her. They loved each other, but they fought a lot too. One night, while I was