Prose by Alexandria Aldrich

Edited by Yen Nhi (Leyna) Hoang

Two siblings talk about their dreams on the porch stairs of a new home. They are both grown now. One 39 and the other 34. If they remind themselves hard enough they’ll start to change, maybe even evolve into new creatures. Though one of them already felt deposited safely into the threaded cotton of a cocoon deep into a seamless sleep:

The scene lays vast, swirling with a green haze of brush stroke clouds atop a red orange gradient sunlit sky. Its colors have the same translucent hue as stained glass. The older sister has a lump in her throat, but prompted words may spew out like water from a facet that hasn’t been turned on for weeks. The air bubbles in between make water struggle to flow freely. Eventually the water will run.

“You know you can talk about it if you want. I’ll listen,” the younger one said stiffly as her skin blurred and rippled across her face like water.

“Okay….” The older one remained at the cusp of their thoughts, still tightly wound in the white stickiness she imagined kept her from speaking. It felt like strands of hair sticking to the back of her throat. It traveled up her airway collecting itself and balling up as she moved her esophagus up and down in discomfort. However, she managed. “I hate how there are consequences to the problems I was willing to fix. I hate how much I hated home because leaving would have been the solution to my problem. Right? Of course it would have, but I couldn’t because that means I would have had to leave you.”

“But you did leave.” The younger one said as her elbows moved to her knees propping her chest up. 

“Right. Right, I did.” She twists the ring around her index finger with her other hand anxiously. “You’re right, and I’ve felt guilty for every second I stepped out the door. Sometimes I like to pretend as if I stayed” 

“Yea when you left, it’s like those wild flowers planted on the hanging terrace never grew again. I watered them enough. At least—I thought I did.”

“That was the problem. You always watered them too much. When I lifted you on the stepping stool, you’d basically pour the whole damn watering can in the pot.” The eldest thinks about how she wanted her voice to rise to a humorous tone, but it stayed stagnant. She thought the moment passed too quickly but the youngest started to laugh.

The younger sister’s laugh is contagious and she gently pushes her older sister’s shoulder to the side to get her to notice her pulling smile. The two start to laugh together and sunlight highlights the swelling water in the younger one’s eyes. They’re not exactly tears of laughter but her chest sinks inward and her shoulders curl forward as a reaction of nostalgia. The older one continues.

“You know I used to dream so much and I don’t dream anymore.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I suppose I don’t know. They just stopped coming.”

“But dreams aren’t an off and on thing. They’re just supposed to happen. It’s natural.”

“Perhaps, that’s true. So then why don’t I dream?”

“I don’t know. Why does it mean so much to you? To dream.”

 She pushes her hair behind her ears.

“If I could let it, I’d want the dreams to wrap me up in its tranquil embrace. Like how bugs get trapped so easily on the web. They never stood a chance. Neither did I. I would never be able to escape the soft and warm water that swallows me up in sleep from those times in my childhood. I’m there and sometimes I didn’t want to be because some dreams were so violent and scary but when I dreamt, there was always a chance that they would be good. Anything was better than being completely enveloped in that conscious… flat—desolate—ground of my reality.” She curled her hand to rub it against her watering eyes, wiping away the excess water. “I just wanted to escape. I hated what was real.” The eldest anxiously twisted the rings on her fingers, she thought that she had said too much.

“I wanted to escape too,” the youngest said.

“Yea.”

“I wanted to escape from her because everytime she looked at me, if she even did at all, her eyes were always heavy. My presence had weight to her. I burdened her.”

“Yea she had that look in her eyes. I also weighed her down.”

“Did our mom not want us?”

“No she did. Otherwise why would she have had us?” The eldest pushed the no out from her teeth. It felt like a lie in efforts to console her sister.

“This was after you left, but one time I read her journal. She’d never let me into her head so I did it on my own. She loved our dad a lot. Like a lot. More than anything in this world—more than us. I think she had kids because he wanted to and then he was dead.” The youngest ran her fingers through her hair pulling at a knot. It didn’t untangle and her hand hung there as she surrendered to its taut pull and continued. “One day he was just dead.”

“How is that?”

“How is what?”

“How could she love us less? You’d think she’d feel even closer to us since we look exactly like him.”

“Maybe that was the issue. Maybe we remind her of her past. Remind her of him.”

“I hate her. Might as well have been orphans.” The eldest said this with passion burning at the threads in her throat. 

“I don’t hate her. Sometimes I wish I did because I would have left like you did. I would have left to go to music school before it was too late. That was the dream, to perform on a big stage with an amazing orchestra. I’m not as strong as you though.”

“You’re stronger than me because you didn’t leave. You had the capabilities to bear such pain. You took care of her even after how much she hurt you. I could never do that.”

“Maybe. Or just weak. You were always much braver than me.”

“No. I was a wreck and lost. I wasn’t brave. I hadn’t a clue where I was going. I went down a really weird path after I left you and mom.”

“Sometimes I wonder why I stayed for so long too. Then I realized I wanted to save my breath so when I knew I could run—I would run really fast. For some reason, I didn’t think it was an option to leave.” The youngest voice gently escapes in breaths, quieting as cold air permeates her lungs.

A cloud of cicadas flew through the wind. Their black bodies laid against the sky as a silhouette. The eldest sibling caught one in her hand. It wiggled through her fingers and the youngest watched her hold it. 

“Stop holding that thing, let it go!” The younger one said. Although she was hardly bothered by her sister’s unusual behavior.

“No, I like it. I love bugs.” 

“You’re weird for that.”

The older one noticed her younger sister’s eyes. They weren’t her usually light brown color. At a perfect angle, it looked like, at times, there once was a fire in her eyes but the fire was put out. The whites that surrounded her iris were gone, and only the slightest of starlight danced across the two onyx pools. It was peculiar but not enough to acknowledge that something was different about her sister. 

“Do you know why I love bugs?” She looked at her sister, pressing her lips together and scrunching her eyebrows too close almost to touch. “Because they get a bad rep. They can be creepy and the thought of them strikes fear in people. People can’t be close to them or they’ll get scared. It makes their spine loose. Pity… and how sad because they’re just misunderstood.  I suppose I relate to that. I mean look at how beautiful their wings are.” 

She gently pinched her fingers enough on the wing to hold it out. Oh how the body of the cicada moved so mechanically. She opened the wing up and folded it back in. She then turned the body of the bug to see its riveting, onyx eyes. In fact she almost fell into them, like the darkness had attempted to swallow her up. Her thoughts were digested seamlessly, one right after the other but she still found herself  in a perversely weird sensation. Her eyes moved back and forth to her sister and then to the cicada in the passing minutes. There were blonde bristles of hair growing across her sister’s arm. They grew thick and spiky, curving into needles—foreign in contrast to her pale skin, yet still subtle enough to dismiss it. Perhaps her sister had just grown cold and the hair on her arms just rose as goosebumps do. Her curiosity allowed her to peek at her peripherals here and there but she mostly remained shy to the subtlety of her sister’s changes and continued to speak. 

“Its little dark eyes you see. I wonder what’s in them. What is it thinking? Or is it just peaceful there? All they have to worry about is an instinct and they hang around their other little cicada friends and just exist.”

“Or it’s just scared of you.” The young one’s face shifted, a little disgusted, pressing her tone into a sternness.  She wanted her sister to realize what was realistic for a bug.

“Yea maybe, but sometimes when I was young and I wanted to leave, I would dream I was a bug. I could have escaped sooner, flew farther. I wouldn’t have had to think much. I would have just had to listen to the instruction my DNA was coded in. I’d just be a happy bug.” The older one glides her finger delicately across the cicada, feeling the fuzz across its abdomen. “Then you know, darling sometimes I dreamt that you were a bug, so I could just take you with me in your sleep, safe in my pocket.”

Now there had been too much change to deny that her sister was turning into a bug. The blonde fur-like bristles resembled real setae and now, unafraid to look, she peered behind her younger sister’s back. A soft translucent and opalescent patterned fabric laid rigid over the young sister’s back side. The fabric was not in motion but it stood still and stiff. The eldest continued to talk.

“I would have taken you away from here so fast, the only thing to wake you up would have been the breaching sound of a sonic boom. That’s how fast. We would have gone somewhere up north. I would have found a job and gotten a shoebox apartment. I’d give you a nice tank to live in with lots of plants and moisture. You’d have food and plenty of water. I would even set up a heating lamp to warm your wings. You would be happy and I would be happy because I had you. In that case darling, it would play in your favor that I love bugs. Anyone else would have squashed you for the bug you are, and I couldn’t take care of you as a human. No I couldn’t. I was only 18. I was just a kid.”

The oldest one paused and she watched her sister closely, unable to look away. Every movement, every shifted limb, slightly mechanical like the wing of the bug she pinched in her fingers moments ago. The wings of the bug that remained in her hands started to flutter intermittently. It sounded like sand gliding down a bamboo chamber. S’s piled upon each other like “Sssssssssssss.” The older one’s two arms lifted to hoist the bug into the air to let it catch the wind under its wings. It flew away into the space ahead to meet the others but when she looked back again to find her sister, all there was resting on the step where her sister used to be was a tiny cicada. Tinier than the usual swarm. The eldest grabbed the bug gently as it hummed and vibrated in the cusp of her hands. She cradled it, pressing it close to her chest in hopes to warm the bug. The elder sister started weeping and wept long enough to forget where she was. 

But how can you know where you are when you’re so immersed in a dream like this?

A few moments passed and all that remained was warm sand in place of the tiny cicada. The eldest looked down into her hands and, panicked in loss, rolled the sand around in her hands, feeling its grit, realizing her sister’s absence. A wailing sound of rise and fall poured out of her until all the air inside her lungs ran out. Slowly, her consciousness started to fade to black.

There is a layer of consciousness where you don’t dream. A layer where you’re completely unaware of your own existence, but there is a space between absolute darkness and being awake. That space is where you dream.

A young voice emerged and ripped the eldest violently out from under the darkness.

“You know what, I’m okay. It’s about 4 PM and we’re sitting on the porch stairs with the orange light warming our faces. And I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling. Maybe I feel free or relieved because it isn’t too cold and we’re far away from the home that we always felt we could never run away from. But we did though. We got away from that awful place. Maybe, just maybe, you don’t dream anymore because you can finally rest. Consciousness isn’t too bad anymore is it sissy? You can rest now. You can be a fleeting bug if you want. Enjoy your life. Can’t we just be done? Make amends and move on from the past?”

“I fucking hope so.” the eldest quickly responded, still disorientated from her tumultuous trip. She hoped her sister couldn’t hear the hint of fear and longing in her voice.

The eldest swore her sister was a bug just moments ago as she blinked and found flashing images behind her eyelids of her sister’s once cicadian features. Now, suddenly even stranger, she is just a young girl. A face rounded with baby fat and blushing skin. Her eyes are back to their fire and brown, her voice more high pitched no longer belonging to a woman, and her hair tightly curled to a time where they both felt stuck in youth forevermore. She felt sorry to see her sister at such a young age again. It only made her feel more guilt because this is the image that remained so clear in her mind the day she left. The eldest’s lips stirred to speak but stopped herself. Instead, she sat with the pain she thought she deserved.

“I mean look at what’s in front of us,” The youngest continued as she pointed out into the distance.

Out under the swirling expanse of sky, on the dusting, vanilla brown land, there were three kids. Two boys around the ages of 5 and 6. A little girl around the age of 3, still wobbling around on her two feet. She ran, trying to keep up with the two boys. They all were laughing but their sound was muffled by a veil of vast space. Quiet, still, was the late afternoon—enough for the two sisters to hear their thoughts and also their sorrows.

The younger sister connected her gaze to her elder, “This is better than the dreams we imagined for ourselves. This is more than what we could have ever asked for. You can’t control dreams. Sometimes they have a way of their own and we’re just there to do their bidding.”

“I think that’s bullshit. We have to have control.”

“My point is that what we dreamed of didn’t go as planned. It became something better. Right? What did you dream of when you left?”

“I’m not sure I had a specific dream like you did. I just wanted to be free, but even when I left I wasn’t free. In a way I was, but there was always still something that held me down.”

“I am telling you now. You are free.” The younger one’s voice solidifies, in hopes that her sister absorbs every word.

“Not from guilt,” the eldest countered.

“I can’t take away your guilt. You know I don’t blame you for leaving but the longer you hold onto the weight that was never yours to hold, well… you’ll be tired for the rest of your life.”

The eldest pushes the sides of her hair behind her ears and wipes her eyes then nose gently, “You’re such a grown little bug.” 

Silence is loud right now, and perhaps it is necessary to accommodate for change or for wings to be spread out wide. A thought mingled in the air, whispering around playfully not belonging to either sister. The atmosphere possessed an ominous veil that laid across both of them. They knew that they could secrete the fluids needed, gnaw their way out of the tightly wound cotton thread, and slip right out. It was time for wings to be spread for flying—no matter the kind of bug. 

“I guess I have grown. Have you thought about your dreams now?” the youngest acknowledged.

“A little bit, yes. It’s more clear now.”

“What is it?”

“To take care of these children like I’ve always wanted to take care of you. I guess there comes a time in this life where we get a second chance. You know, to tell our younger selves what to prepare for, how to live, and to give them what they’ve always deserved.”

“Right, I see.”

“Oh and by the way. You still play the piano beautifully. It’s not too late for those dreams.”

“I actually have a live audience already. A whole band even! They’re just a bit small and they only use pots, pans, and spoons for instruments. They will grow, though.”

The small little girl waddled over to her mother. Moving the woman’s arms open with her body, the little girl concentrated into the space between her curled hands.

The eldest sister asked her, “What do you have in your hands baby?” and there a little black beetle crawled out. The eldest looked at her sister, smiled as though she heard the words before they surfaced. 

Her younger sister is no longer a girl, she’s at the age she really is, and states, “Like mother, like daughter.”

The ends of the eldest’s mouth lifted into a gentle smile as she hoisted her child onto her knee, pressing her lips to the plumpness of the girl’s cheek and replied “Yes, I know.”

Beneath the darkness, the older sister’s dream state weaved a symphony of colorful threads that bonded her to both her consciousness and reality. The dreams indecipherable from real life. Her wings tucked safe and sound in the fibers of space and time, awaiting the next chance to take flight. 

To my mom who kept my wings warm for flying.