Life Contracts: November - December

November 2016. Around Thanksgiving.

We had taken a break from each other.

You had been seeing your ex again, the one you swore was the one for you. I told you all she

wanted was to use you but you didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t have believed me either. The girl

who was utterly and immensely in love with you telling you not to try with someone else, when

she desperately wanted you to try with her.

I was right, of course, and as your friend, which I have always been from the beginning, I was

there for you, even if it hurt me.I found a fling I disguised as another friendship to keep me from

falling in love with someone else, simply because I refused to.

But you had written to me telling me how it didn’t work out, and how you wanted to see me...I

said yes. And we had sex. Mind blowing sex. Sex so good I blanked out and found myself

drowning under pillows. Sex so good you actually cuddled with me.

When I went home you told me you wanted to kill yourself, that you hated living and that

everyone who you loved ended up leaving you with no explanation.

I wasn’t going to but that didn't matter.

December 19th.

You asked me to come over again. We were back on better terms but still weren’t together.

I knew your head wasn’t in the right place, but you needed to see me, so I went.

Sweats and a baggy shirt, I wasn’t trying to arouse you, but here we were again, fucking.

We didn't use a condom this time.  “I don’t even have strong sperm, you’ll be fine.”

I told you I loved you, looked into your eyes and waited for you to say it back. Instead you

kissed me.

We bathed, separately and I napped in your bed. We ate in silence and when I went home I  

told you I had loved the sex. You told me you’d regretted it. You knew how I felt about you,

and that it wasn’t fair.

You told me again you wanted to die. I didn’t hear from you all night. I thought I’d lost you. I

didn’t sleep. But I heard from you the next morning and you said you had fallen asleep.

Life Contracts: October 2017-September 2017

Life Contracts

By Elixandra Alvarez

October 2017.

I like to think I am not a mourner. Except for my baby.

September 28th 2017.

You kind of know when you’re expecting something to happen, and then it happens, and you don’t

know how to react? That’s what my grandmother’s death felt like.  As soon as I called Mami and

she tried to mask her sadness with calmness, something that she almost knows how to do well, I heard

my dad’s voice in the back “...la presion…” and knew. And I stalled because I knew it was going

to be a long day.

I got home and my dad was already gone. I sat next to my mom on the empty couch.

“She died didn’t she.”

“How’d you know?”

I shrugged. I was waiting for it. I wasn’t oblivious.

The thought of her sweet smile and her loving caring nature. One of my favorite people on this Earth

was gone. I smiled and cried for five minutes. . I would no longer taste her savory sancocho nor would

I hear her cuentos that would make us all laugh. No longer would I hear the timbre of her voice and the

peace in her soul, even while struggling with her heart. You would’ve looked at her and never guessed

she had weak arteries, that they were so clogged up that it was killing her and that her body was too

weak to even go through with the operation, you would’ve never guessed that the medicated patches

on her chest, medications, home remedies, and foreign drugs helped her stay alive for a while. She

made it to her 50th wedding anniversary with Papá, which is all she wanted. I had the privilege to

spend a day with her and my grandpa on his birthday last June and something told me it was the last

time I would.

September 29th, 2017.

It still wasn’t bothering me.

“I feel guilty...why am I not sad? I only cried once. What’s wrong with me?”

I really did not feel sadness. I didn’t feel like it was my place, I never did anything wrong. I loved her,

I care for her, and she to me so there was  nothing but happy memories of my grandmother. She was a devout woman, and was in heaven and was watching over us.

But why wasn’t I sad?

I wasn’t sad last October when my great grandmother died. She didn’t survive her last heart attack. I talked about

all the things that made my Nana, Nana. That’s all I thought about for a month. I didn’t cry.

Death was just a reality for me.

x

The Things We Know

The Things We Know

I know what love is.I didn't always feel like you loved me. Not when your grandfather died and you had to travel miles away, with no clear sign of return and I stayed up worried almost every night because you were in a foreign country and I couldn't communicate with you. I loved you then. I didn't know if you loved me during that visit to the doctor. I didn't know if you loved me when you let me stay on the train alone.But I know now. After your visit, which took almost two months to happen, I knew. I knew we shared the same pain and we still do. I realized after you laid with me on my couch and held me like I was going to disappear, and the words "I love you" finally slipped from your lips just as the thought of me leaving you formed in my mind. I knew you did when I cried because I loved you so much and  you kissed my wet face, making feel secure. I knew then that this was a start, a start of a new journey, the start of a new time in my life and yours. I knew this would last forever. I know you love me now and I know you will never stop.

Genesis

Genesis

by Elixandra Alvarez

I am never late, or I try not to be. "If you are early, you are on time. If you are on time, you are late.

If you are late, you might as well not come." This was the advice Ms.Cisse gave us during our internship

training workshop, when we were learning interview etiquette, and that message always stuck. It's common

knowledge that being late isn't a good thing. You get reprimanded for it when you're late for class or a job.

When you're late for a job, you get hours off of work meaning less money in your pocket. When you're late

for class, you get less information in your head meaning you don't learn all that you're supposed to. When

you're late on your period, you get less sleep meaning you've spent all day and night scrolling through

WebMd searching for answers, checking your calendar and checking your period app trying to clear your

conscience that maybe you're not late because you're pregnant. When you get your first period, they tell

you to always track it so you're not late. "If you're late..." and even more so when you're sexually active,

"if you're late..." I try not to be late but sometimes it just happens.

Saying yes is tricky. Yes is a noun. An affirmative answer or decision. Yes is not no, but can also

be no. We're programmed in a way where we can say yes to things and not mean yes at all. "Are you

ready?" Yes (but you aren't. No one knows how guilty you feel.) "Are you coming?" Yes (but you don't

want to go. Why would you want to be around all those people, judging you with their squinting eyes?)

"Do you love me?" Yes (but I hate that you never say it back. But I can't show you that it makes me cry

at night. So I don't say anything.) Saying yes is almost like a reflex and I said yes to you, little bean.

Your dad thought it’d be an awesome idea to take us out on a paint and sip date. I couldn’t sip.

You were growing. “You’re a creative, you have to create,” he said, basically dragging me out the bed.

I put on my fuzzy sandals and grabbed my tall bottle of water, the only thing you’d let me consume those

days. He was right though: I was a creative because I created you. Created the world you would live in,

created your room, with the daffodil painted borders and the cloud lamp I spent 6 hours and countless

YouTube videos to make. That night, we were to paint our heaven. Your dad had no problem painting it.

He’s a man, after all. They’re simple that way. I painted clouds, and in the clouds, I painted you, covered

in petals and conch shells, in pearls and a blanket of fur holding your head so that you wouldn’t fall from

heaven. Your dad looked over at what we had created and held my knee for a long time. You and I didn’t

know it then, but we had created his heaven and his peace. We created it. On our way home, he confessed

to me that he didn’t know he’d be a dad this soon. He thought that it would happen later in his life, when

he would be 32 and I would be 27. “We all have our plan of life but mine starts here.”

ni de aquí, ni de allá

ni de aquí, ni de allá

by Elixandra Alvarez

what makes a place a home

is it given to you, do you earn it

is a home made or bought

who decides what home is

i can't tell you what it is

because home is where you belong

and i don't belong anywhere

not with my almost perfect english and not with my almost perfect spanish

not with my polio shot scar that is like a food label on my arm and not with my high school diploma, the proof of my upbringing

not with my light skin and curls that make you a bruja and not with my dark skin and straight hair that make you ethno-ambiguous  

you don't belong here,they concrete pavement reminds me

you weren't born here

we don't care that you've lived here almost all your life

it's only been 17 years

how dare you call this

home

you didn't grow up here, the flowered walkways chastise me

we don't care that your mother took a pasola to the hospital, tubi done, rosary in hand

wobbling on the linoleum floors to birth you.

we simply don't bother to care

you don't know either of our struggles, but what about mine?

what is home

to someone like me

where do I fit where

do i belong

no soy ni de aquí

ni de allá

Let Me Tell You a Story

 Let Me Tell You a Story

by Elixandra Alvarez

The shiny, smooth spine feels cold under my fingers as I run it across the different sized
books on the shelf. It feels like my fingers are walking up stairs, and each book was a
landing where a new neighbor lived.I look up at the clinically white glaze of the library lights.

      
It's funny to think of books like being people, with spines and a face and thoughts and
memories. Are we books too? We are read and judged by our covers. We are passed down from hand
to hand, the story getting better as time passes. Sometimes our pages are ripped like leaves under a rake,
or folded down when someone has decided to take a break from us. Sometimes our margins are written in
and sometimes we are protected like jewels.

My father read to me every night. The move from the warm tropical air of the Caribbean to the cold
unforgiving winds of New York City created dragons for me to slay. The language was just another
barrier I had to cross. And reading was my bridge. We would sit cozied up every night, sometimes
the same story and sometimes a different one.We always came back to the one about the owl. She
couldn't hoot like the others but she didn't let that stop her from being amazing. She was my favorite.

"Eres la lechuza más inteligente de todas, No importa que no puedas ulular."

    I would fall asleep, lips pronouncing inaudible "who" sounds.

    I realize I've lost my mom in the library's mystical elegance. Six books under my arm,
I go on a quest to find her. It won't hit me until I'm two years into college how I long to be back in my
room, back in the corner of the library, submerged into worlds I can never really travel to but always
dream of.

Roots/Raices

a screenplay inspired by Seven Jewish Children, a Play by Caryl Churchill

Roots/Raices

[Scene: “Typical” Dominican kitchen. Walls painted yellow.
Wooden table set. Old gas stove sits in between the white fridge with 22 magnets of fruits on it.
On the walls, little replicas of campo houses. Outside the window the wind blows, making the
tree outside tap the window and you hear several car honks. The location is Washington Heights.]

[Stage Directions: Grandmother stands in front of the stove making coffee on a greca.
The dad sits on the table reading the newspaper El Especialito while the mom slowly picks up a
piece of paper that has fallen on the floor. On it is their daughter’s assignment for heritage month.
“Dominican Republic” is written on the paper but the words have been crossed out. The mom shows
the paper to the dad. ]

Scene begins.

Don’t scare her, don’t tell her about it.

Don’t tell her about the oppression. Don’t.

Tell her about the long 22 years.

Tell her how we were the ones at the bottom for years and years and years and tell her about Duarte,Sanchez y Mella.

Don’t tell her that.

Keep her in the dark.

(Like they kept us?)

Don’t tell her about El Chivo, El Jefe.

Why not she should know --

To protect herself from men like that! --

She should know so she won’t ever repeat it.

Tell her about the sisters and the sugarcane fields and the parties. Tell her about the parties.

But don’t tell her why we went.

Don’t tell her about the perejil.

Why wouldn’t you tell her the most important part?

Don’t tell her how we drove them out.

Not we. HIM.

Don’t tell her about the rapes or the constant watchful beady eyes of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.
Don’t tell her how we had to keep his picture in our home, how we had to be dressed nice all the
time just in case he’d visit. Tell her how our daughters belonged to him. Tell her how our sons belonged
to him too. Tell her how we’re glad it’s over.

But it doesn’t feel like it.

Tell her we’re trying to fix it. Tell her we’re not all like them.

x

Letter to an X, -- inspired by Major Jackson's "OK Cupid"

Letter to an X,

by Elixandra Alvarez

Kissing you is like kissing an octopus

And kissing him is like kissing an angel

And kissing you is like kissing a plastic bag

And kissing him is like kissing lychee jellies

And kissing you is like kissing a toilet bowl

And kissing him is like kissing a spa jacuzzi

And kissing you is like kissing eczema

And kissing him is like kissing fresh pedicured toes

And kissing you is like having an asthma attack

And kissing him is like having an orgasm

And kissing you is like drowning after jumping off the diving board then forgetting how to swim

And kissing him is like going to the pool and finding a chaise chair empty and no one in the pool

And kissing you is like being forced

And kissing him is like having permission

And kissing you is like chewing a used coffee filter

And kissing him is like chewing Hubba Bubba gum

And kissing you is like having a back up plan

And kissing him is like a priority

And kissing you is like making out in church with the saints watching you sin

And kissing him is like making out in a hotel room with flowers all over

And kissing you is like being a zoo animal

And kissing him is like being a free bird

And kissing you is like a one night stand

And kissing him is like a lifetime.