973, though tidy in appearance, looked like she had seen some shit. Three deep crevices carved hard across her forehead. Purple half-moons pulsed under her eyes. Her nails gnawed by the weight that brought her here. As she paced the 7 x 7 light blue papered room, her gaze was pulled upward toward the speaker in the corner. She blinked. Then blinked again. She pressed her blue cotton shirt down, tucking it into her jeans momentarily, then untucking it.
Hey, tablemates! Sorry to interrupt your Zoom call or spreadsheeting or whatever pulled you to our neighborhood coffee shop to squat for six hours. It has come to my attention that several of you feel there is something “off” about my behavior. You’re worried that I’m a “loose cannon” with my erratic hand gestures and bizarre mumblings. Allow me to explain.
"Just listen,” my friend said, handing me her headphones.
At thirteen years old, I sat on the steps of my junior high school while Martin Gore of Depeche Mode spoke directly to my soul. Martin had me at that first word of his tragic yet electrifying lyric— “fragile!” With puberty and unrequited crushes and pimples strewn across my face, I too knew what it meant to be fragile daily. Tears brimming from having been seen, I promptly went out to Bill’s Records and bought “Black Celebration” on cassette.
“Why do you want to die and leave me?” I ask my mom. Having spent obligatory
Sunday mornings at All Saints Catholic Church, my ten-year-old soul has developed
a pretty strong belief in right versus wrong from the second-row pew. I hold fiercely
to my principles and know how to defend them with one part heartstring and one part
punch.
Sitting in the third row of the passenger van, I watch as we pull further and further away from the square in Cuzco, Peru. Away from the artists selling their paintings for pennies, from the restaurants advertising fresh fried guinea pigs, from the lost tourists circling the square in search of audible English. The slight bustle of the town disappears from sight and is replaced with darting chickens and dirt roads.
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