to the bone

KARRINGTON GARLAND | SENIOR, JOURNALISM

abuelita doesn’t understand why my mother & i eat to the bone, how we nibble into the chicken, pecking like birds into the softened meat til we uncover the muddy porcelain lying dead in our earth toned hands white smooth twigs collected onto our plates like tiny trophies abuelita doesn’t peck at cartilage, grows offended when asked why her teeth don’t cut deep enough, why she leaves flecks of chicken flesh scattered atop the carcass, little shreds of unspooled carnage teeth marks, halfmoons unfinished uncomplete devouring unfurled onto her plate maybe it’s her mouth thick tongued suitable enough to coax the invisible wounds on our napes into fruition her subtle power in words, they spill out her mouth dead silent stale in the air above our heads it’s her heavy sadness adorning our tiny temples static & vibrant & potent, curling out of her wilting browning orifice cyclical utterance of a vague mind heated over by palpable sadness you know, she cries when we leave right? time tumbling out of the cracks of her leathery hands, she only knows how to cook & clean & hoard her love into empty plots of land left for her children & their children she’s building generational wealth between her tears, her memories & the vacant land of Leigh Acres, which my mother & i will never build upon so many humid memories are buried in the fertile ground of this neighborhood, so many empty echoes to my mother’s past life as a girl & to my abuelitas early days of frenzied motherhood, hoarding her love into the barren spaces left in the halls of my mother’s childhood home a couple plots away from our new land there is only so much time before we too are nothing but colorless bones buried under someone else’s home

The door was open, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go in. He was frozen outside the door. The fireman’s childhood home. Ablaze. He had always admired its beauty and hoped to own it someday. That hope was dead now, burned to death.

He mustered the courage to walk through the door. This was his job. He signed up for this. The owners weren’t home when this happened; he wondered who would tell them - tell them their beautiful house is gone.

Inside, his heart broke. The walls he had run his hand along every day suffered the scarring of third-degree burns to its beautiful wallpaper skin. The worn mahogany banister had flames dancing around it, climbing the wall to reach the new family’s pictures.

In the living room, his younger self runs around the couch with his brothers, leaping over cushions, dodging fake bulletschildlike laughter louder than the crackling of the flames.

And then, screaming. A desperate cry for help tumbles down the stairs, crashing into him. The burning stairs creak, threatening to break as he walks up them. The higher