Free The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert by Rios de la Luz Page A

of construction paper as wallpaper and napped every single day for three months.
    The first night I decided to go out it was because I stepped on a flyer to a three-story night club, “Area 21” on my way home. The flyer promised free drinks before 10 and an art gallery tucked away in a tent on the roof of the building. At the entrance, the bouncer stifled laughter when he saw me. He pointed at my mid-section and told me if I cut my black tee shirt into a crop top, I could go in. I scratched my scalp and slid lipstick on my mouth. He handed me the scissors. I took my shirt off and cut above the belly button. I put my shirt back on went around him as he caught drift of fake IDs. Heard him tell the girls they could go in if one of them cut slits into the side of her dress. I nudged at the short purple door and crawled through the entryway. I crawled inside a black and white checkered tunnel that led my body up and down until I tasted artificial fog and saw pulsating white light.
    Area 21 is an old office building with sticky floors and vomit phantoms. Cubicles from the previous 9-5 ghosts are individually themed. I picked “Mermaid Cavern” because a young pretty couple took “Manatee Mansion.” I danced alone as lasers splattered sweaty messes meshing together. I bumped into a masked man and woman. One of them offered me a drink. I declined. The woman offered me shrooms and I stuffed the fungus into my bra. The masked people attempted conversations. I covered their mouths and shook my head. We danced close. I tasted their exhaling breaths. They tasted my fingers. I left them in the Manatee Mansion and headed toward the center of the club. I chugged water from the mouth of a spitting angel water fountain and then followed an exit sign home.
     
    Sweat is clinging onto clumpy strings of curls and down my temples. I had a dream about a neighborhood burning. My house was engulfed in emerald flames. Smoke twirled around me. I grabbed at my throat and coughed out silence. I woke up alone. The piercing through my gut is thick. I can hear the branch digging into the mattress underneath me. The sweet gum’s branches are growing fast. I can’t wipe away the dark arms of the tree reaching toward me like I usually do to the shadow people of sleep paralysis. The sweet gum grazes my cheek. A twig initially tickles. Then, with all its might, it settles into my bicep. The thought to scream is secondary to the creeping regret of never having a child. I regret not leaving with the masked couple. I regret not erasing you completely out of my memory.
    I imagined you as the father to my kid because of your persistence on calling yourself a future soccer dad. I drove to Arizona in the summer. I hiked down the Grand Canyon alone, tasting dust and wishing you could see how much it looks like a painting. Our little girl, vocal and stubborn, a combo of you and I would say that it looked better in HD. If I had given birth, my endurance for this pain could compare. I could claim this was nothing because I brought a god damned human being onto this floating speck in space. She would be my gift to you along with a box full of this sweet gum’s spiked capsules.
    I am stuck to these branches and twigs soaking my mattress with reds of Blood Type O. I only figured this out because you told me what yours was at a house party as meaningless mingling and curiosity brewed for my own. This is where we first met. You called me pretty. You told me you enjoyed the cadence of my laughter. I shook your hand and waved as I left the party.
    The sweet gum continues to expand and reach into my home. Parts of the ceiling are crumbling into a skylight. Patches of twinkling atmosphere expose themselves. The air is cold and still. Every breath is harsh. I can still smell hints of the earth.
    I couldn’t hear the message you left me on New Year’s Eve because I had just kissed someone new and music was blurring into drunken ears. I danced against a person I didn’t