This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2021 Spring Print Edition.
Illustration by Mita Sharma
A documentary about Spain on the TV, my mother is dreaming of a life to end her own, and though she has never said so, for the last seven years it has all been my fault. I got my money’s worth with you, she said, staring at pink and red hills. I believed for the longest time that in Spain the sun was always in the middle of setting. I believed for even longer that all TV was about Spain. Except for the ads, which I liked, but made my mother cross, saying We use blood, hair, saliva samples to determine your body’s own most efficient methods of loss. We got him seven hundred thousand dollars--I’ll tell you how, right after this. But there was never a right after this, only more Spain, more laxative tea, more Spain. My mother’s perfect life on commercial break forever, my perfect life standing next to it, too afraid of starting a fight on accident. But it’s thinking of science programs. It’s thinking of Mars. It’s thinking of being next-door neighbors with the planetarium, spending all day looking up, only going home for three square meals. Someday I will write no journals, only grocery lists. I wiIl live on that hill everyone keeps dying on. My mother has loved Spain as long as I have been holding my breath. It has been so long and so long.