I nurse walks in and begins to check his IV. I still just stare. She looks up at me like she expects me to say something, react, anything. What am I supposed to say? What will make this better? Change it? She seems o settle on just pitying me. She gives me one more glance and walks out the room. We’re alone again. I take a couple steps closer to him and rest my hands on the foot of the bed. I can see his chart: Antonio Joaquim Pereira Dias, DOB: July 20, 1990, head trauma from head on collision. I don’t really know how to respond. I feel like vomiting. A sudden beeping makes me jump. It’s coming from the machines. A string of nurses and a doctor rush in. I quickly back away from the bed. I suddenly feel like I don’t belong here. The doctor keeps saying there’s no pulse, and the nurses continue delivering shocks. The doctor who had spoken to me before I came into the room turns to me. “Even if we are able to get a pulse back, he most likely will not make it long and defiantly will not wake up. Do you want us to stop?” I just nod wanting the chaos and noise to just end. A nurse turns off the heart monitor and there is silence. “Time of death 11:48pm.” A bubble of hysteria begins to come up my throat, and I just want to laugh. Everything is off kilter, and I know it’s not the appropriate response, but I just want to laugh. I’m just too scared to cry.

Everything seems to fade out. Colors dull and edges blur. I can still hear the patrolman talking on the machine, but it’s like cotton is in my ears. The machine gives a loud beep and I feel I arms jerk. The scene in front of me jolts back in sharp and hard. Dear god an accident? Why do they even call it an accident when it’s always someone’s fault? What the hell is wrong with me? I’m thinking about the dumbest things right now. There was a car accident and I’m contemplating terminology. Wait, who was in the accident? Tony? He’s always speeding on route one, playing the I’m the big brother I know best card. I flash back to all the car crash videos they showed us in driver’s ed. They were called things like Red Asphalt and Violent Wheels. I remember three girls passed out when they showed the brain spilled out on the street like mushy soup. Even horror movies don’t get that gruesome. No, Tony is a good driver with good reflexes. He doesn’t take stupid risks even when he speeds. It can’t be dad. He’s on the road so much that he’s a better driver then most people on the road. Though, he’s on the phone a lot for his work, and when he tends to get upset when things go wrong with work. He can be such an aggressive driver when he gets mad. Still, he’s never been in an accident. My stomach is turning and cramping up. I grab the edge of the kitchen table and ease myself into a chair. Everything starts to feel heavy again. God damnit I can’t stand not knowing. Who does this? Who leaves a message like that? No details, just that there was an accident, it’s just cruel. Oh hell, I’m an idiot: the rest of the message! My legs are still shaking as I jump up, ready to tackle the machine, as if it is purposely hoarding this information from me. On my knees in front of the machine I slam the play button. “This is Virginia Highway Patrolman Bill Jenkins. There has been an accident. You’re mother was hit from the right side when someone merged into her on 66.” Fucking hell mom, of course it was her. She was always the more distracted driver. She’s terrible with her phone and usually needs both her hands to work it. Was she on her phone when that idiot merged into her? Dear god she’s not dead is she? “She slamed into the medium and hit her head on the window. The paramedics say she has a concussion and some bruises, but she’ll be ok. She is in the ER of Fairfax Hospital. I hope everything works out well for the both of you. Good night.”

            My mother used to have just one doll as a child. She grew up with three sisters, and they were all poor. Having that one doll was a big deal. She actually still has it, in Portugal. It’s a glass china doll with an old fashioned lavender satin dress. It has a petticoat and everything. It’s currently sitting in one of her childhood trunks in our house in Valdreu, Portugal. The trunks were moved to our house when I was 11 and our house was built. Before then they sat in my grandma’s house along with all my aunts’ trunks. While similar in style they are each unique. The two belonging to my mother are about 2 ½ feet tall and 4 feet across. They are a dark rich brown wood, with worn brass finishings. They are covered in fine carved swirls. They really don’t make trunks like this anymore. Old furniture like that just enamors me. The intricate details and history they have lived through. My mom still keeps them full of her old things, a copy of her wedding video, her father’s navy hat, that old doll, a bag of love letters between her and my father when they were long distance and her old books. Her history is still held in those trunks. I remember when I was thirteen and spent hours going through them. I found the doll first, and immediately remembered her telling me about her. I remember running my hands across the satin dress, smoothing her brown curls and fixing the bow in her hair. It was so pretty, but I also knew my mother rarely played with her. She wasn’t allowed to, because it was breakable and her mother did not want her to ruin it. Instead my mom made dolls with whatever she could find, sticks, scraps of fabric and old socks. She says girls back then had to have more imagination. Next I found a red bag. I opened it and found it full of envelopes. They were all filled with two or three pages, back and front, of small neat cursive Portuguese. It took a few minutes of me reading them to realize they were between my mom and dad, while she was in Switzerland and my father here in the US. She kept them all these years. I remember it was weird for my 13 year old mind to wrap around my parents having a long distance romance. My mother was 20 years old, living on her own in a foreign country with no family. Her boyfriend, my father, was thousands of miles away in northern Virginia. It was a picture I had never painted of my mother. That doll was her childhood and those letters were her at my age. She married my father at almost 22 and left both the doll and the letters in those trunks, in Portugal.

It’s a dangerous place.

The smell of salt water drenches

the air, revitalizing me, pulling me in.

It really shouldn’t. I briefly remember

despite the warmth it’s still January, winter.

I step across rocks and see my next

illusion. The ocean is an ombre of

gold and blue, looking oh so still. I close

my eyes and forget everything.

To my right smooth sandy steps descend

further down the rocks. I can hear a faint

whoosh as I get closer. Tourists lean

over a wall capturing the moment.

I glance over the wall and freeze. Twenty feet

Down is a narrow ravine. The cliff walls are

carved with harsh, jagged lines. Despite the

luminous day, it was a foreboding dark below.

Behind me a man says:

Bem-vindo à Boca do Inferno-Welcome to The Mouth of Hell.

beneath weeds entangled up the walls.

They slither through rocks.

The squatters grow tall

With a half collapsed roof,

it’s more of a courtyard

then a house, but imagine

nights beneath it, the rain barred.

Glass still crusts the window

frames. Rust coats their handles.

Forgotten faces and names once

peered out watching town scandals.

Cinders still lay at the hearth and,

Soot still glazes the stone walls.

Did they leave suddenly?

Did they even leave the house at all?

-Diana Dias Section 4

I’m dressed in brocade and satin,

with a sapphire around my neck.

The furniture is carved with intricate swirls

so seamless and fine.

My bed is flawless, with fluffed pillows and smooth sheets.

It is made every morning by maids I’m told not to acknowledge,

as I am a princess now.

My husband, my prince, only wishes that my

oh so pretty face is never wrinkled with a frown,

or any other expression but a pleasant smile,

not a joyous laugh or a playful glare, for my job

is to be a beautiful happy princess. It is a part I’ve

been contracted to play.

I choose this, my new prison,

but a prison forever served is better then

freedom and servitude.

Isn’t it?

-Diana Dias

Plastic brown eyes, with fine scratches, are still intact.

They witness everything.

She’s in her usual position,

clutched in her 13 year old arms.

It’s dusk. She’s barefoot, in her pajamas.

She’s sprinting down the road,

For her life.