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.”