We mistook the dragonfly for forever
by Tara Isabel Zambrano
Nothing is as enormous as the dragonfly that once, as long as my index finger, flashed like a pickpocket into our house and fed on the spiders hanging in the corners, their webs with dead mosquitoes and flies, garden snakes from our backyard coiled near the humidifier and/or at the base of the mirror rising their heads to see their reflection, little fuckers of frogs who endlessly croaked at night, frolicked on the patio and jumped so high they bumped their heads on the ceilings and fell unconscious, moths and wasps glued on the tall living room windows peeping into our lives, and now our yard and our house is licked clean but the dragonfly is unable to move with all the miscreants churning inside its abdomen when my husband peels it with the grease in his voice, c’mon, let’s go, it sinks into the carpet even though it wants to return to its family in the wild, it longs to pick its food—sit on flowers, turn its yellow screening pigments 360 degrees like earth on its axis, sparkle its purple-blue torso in the sun as if transmitting a morse code of life, and my husband says it’s about to die—if it dies here it will smell, so we carry it out like a corpse, place it on the hammock—the pale fabric sags and sways under the jawbone of the moon and everything that disappeared from the yard comes back to feast on it.
Luster
by Tara Isabel Zambrano
Granny’s in hospice. Relatives bring flowers, say how unfair she’s suffering, she always cared for others more than herself. In the daytime, bees come in through the windows, collect around the fresh and wilting blossoms, caterpillars stuck to their honeyed abdomen. At night, the moths line up on her blanket. Once a hummingbird arrives. The bees buzz around it—graceful like calligraphy.
They are mourning, Papa says as he wipes down Granny’s sweaty feet and arms because of the meds.
At night, I hear Papa sobbing, and Ma arguing about expenses, Granny’s nurse. Then Papa goes to Granny’s room and holds her hand for comfort.
Sometimes Granny opens her eyes, hard and white as the pearls in the necklace Ma got from Granny’s locker after she got sick. Every morning, after her bath, Ma takes them out of her dresser drawer, kisses them, sings them love ghazals, drapes them around her neck and dances like a dolphin I’ve watched on TV. I always wanted this necklace, she says. Then she searches online to find ways to keep them shining.
When Granny dies, the bees cover her body with their wings fanned out, the hummingbird enters her mouth and flutters in her chest as if she still has a heart. The moths lead her funeral procession. They burn together in the pyre, the ash a mix of wings, little bones, and Granny’s flesh. Papa says the bird, the bees and the moths will carry her spirit to heaven.
Where did her eyes go? I ask.
I don’t know, Ma says, her fingers coaxing the white moons on her neck, each one like a Granny’s eye, rolling, watching, sitting on hot sand.
Tara Isabel Zambrano is a writer of color and the author of short-story collection, Ruined A Little When We Are Born published by Dzanc Books fall 2024. https://taraisabelzambrano.com/
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