This morning, clouds spilled from the top of the Sierra Centrales and she remembered the dream she had last night. A childless friend whom she’s known for years finally becomes pregnant. A pink bassinet waiting in the hallway. The husband appears in the background reciting the mantra: “bigger house, bigger house, bigger house.” Meanwhile, the road outside their small apartment transforms itself into a long gray ribbon bordered by gorse. The brilliant yellow flowers held in place by tangled branches of thorns. Their scent is like the vague memory of loosestrife, black-eyed Susan, evening primrose that the woman left back home.

::

The night after witnessing her first bull fight in Seville, she drinks sangria until dawn in a small bar on Calle Arfe. Alone. Quiet. Undisturbed. The locals give her wide berth and cross themselves when passing. Perhaps she is the reincarnation of Carmen returning to haunt their nights. When she finally collapses into her small hotel bed, she dreams of the bullfighter caressing the bull. The horns barely touching the man’s body. His cape exploding over the bull’s head like a huge blossom of color. Gold, fushia, and magenta falling like petals into the open mouths of the amazed tourists.

::

The last dream before she leaves. The delicate hands of the flamenco dancer who commutes every day from the small village in the Andalusia hills. His narrow, intense face is lost in duende; he doesn’t even notice her, with her rouge and lip gloss. Another anonymous face in the audience. He is pure gypsy and has the olive skin, long hair, and black eyes to prove it. She has nothing but a faded passport and a husband sleeping alone on the other side of the world. Not even the moon bothers to appear in the indigo sky. Stars shape a new constellation from a myth she will forget by morning.

Bio: Linda Nemec Foster