It is 9:12 p.m. on a Thursday. There are no stars in the smog-smitten sky. I’m driving home when you call me. You never call, so of course I answer. It’s not you on the other end. It’s your mania. She is enraged. You pissed her off again: called her evil. Over and over again. Evil. Evil evil. Evil evil evil evil evil until it has almost no sting but lo and behold your mania feels the sting. She is rolling across the floor tearing down the curtains hiding behind your oven splattering herself across the windows so you can’t see even the smog sprinkling bleach on all of the surfaces pulling at your long dark eyelashes pinching your tongue between her fingers. You know that she came back—even though she promised she wouldn’t, not after the last time—because you’ve gone and gotten your heart broken again. Again. Again again again again again. So I turn my car around. Bring you chicken soup that I know you won’t eat. Sweep the bleach off the counter and present you with a cup of water. You don’t drink it. She won’t let you, she’s still got your tongue between her fingers. Through your ear, I whisper to her: this is magic. She says: no, it’s not, I know magic and this ain’t it. I say: this is a kind of magic you’ve never tasted before; the kind you’ve been looking for all your life, the kind that’ll vanquish the evil. She says: ...are you sure this is that kind. I say: no. She asks you to drink it anyways, and you throw it back like a magic-oholic. The three of us go to sleep in your bed. Your mania lies between us.

It is 6:49 a.m. on Friday. There is a neon explosion on the horizon. Your mania starts to cry. You cry with her. And me, too. It’s the magic. It’s leaking from our eyes. Thick dark liquid. It’s pooling on your pillows, across your bedsheet. It spills to the floor. Keep crying. Pooling, pooling, pooling. Magic floods the bedroom. We stand in it. Pouring from our eyes, dripping down our bodies, splashing into more magic on the floor. You take my hand and we wade through it. Knee-high, then waist-high, then up to our shoulders. We almost drown in it. Drown. Fill the whole building with magic. The other tenants sink to the bottom. Drown drown drown. We leave the building. Stand in the middle of the street, in the middle of the city, hold hands and cry, fill the street submerge the city engulf everybody, drown. Drown drown drown drown drown drown drown—there is now an ocean where Los Angeles used to be. There is you and there is me, floating in our own magic. We have vanquished the evil, the heartbreak. Your mania finally lets go of you. You and I. We let go of each other. We have always been islands.

K. Degala-Paraíso

(she/they) is a Los Angeles-based Filipinx-American writer. Her work has appeared in ANMLY, Okay Donkey, PANK, and elsewhere; and has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She teaches creative writing and cuts her own hair.

Author’s website: https://www.kdegalaparaiso.com