2 Pieces by Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez
Purple Prose
This body is the prose I write and call story, prose bruised purple by spirits pervading connective tissues. They’ll tell me she’s adorned-overdone-interrupts. They don’t know the high-end concealer necessary to sponge over broken capillaries. They don’t know the nightshades latticed in my throat. They don’t know how my mother cupped her palms and scooped the final granules of earth from her dreams to mold me. From her earth columns of support grew, yet my mother’s soil was bruised too. A legacy of trauma nests in my plasma, fused to memory leaking from broken vessels. Epidermis might forget touch (old cells sloughed away), yet this body never forgets that she didn’t consent to blows or words or hands or history. Prose bruised purple not for a male gaze or angelic trick, but because bruises are violet-indigo things: testimonies that fade to dis(re)membered flesh if they are not words.
Recurring Dream
I offered you my heart. Chest cleaved open in the operating room, I watched you hold it in your hands. You studied. Scrutinized. Pursed your lips. It’s bruised, you said. Not viable. It just won’t work.
I offered you my eyes. Waiting in darkness, I listened to you sigh and tsk. It’s a wonder you’ve made it this far.
I offered you my lungs. Breathless, I awaited your acceptance as you groped and prodded. The air you inhale is killing you. Certainly not what we need.
I offered you my memory. Hippocampus on your table, you gathered a team to study my lobes of memory. She’s got it all wrong, one said. Problematic, they agreed.
What is it that you want? Desperation pierced through me. Scalpel in hand, you cut a half-smile in my lower abdomen, removed my uterus. Holding my womanhood in your hands, you winked. It’s best this way. One day you’ll understand.
Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez (she/her) writes in an oversized chair located in her San Luis Valley home. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Complete Sentence, The Drabble, The Plentitudes Journal, Sky Island Journal, The Brooklyn Review, The Nasiona, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, The Wire's Dream Magazine, Ember Chasm Review and elsewhere. Learn more about Adrianna at adriannasanchezlopez.com or follow her on Instagram @a.drisl.