The calm early-August breeze made its way through the screen windows of my Nanay’s deck as we sat on her swing admiring the crape myrtles in her backyard. We sat directly in front of a big, rich flower tree with bubblegum-pink blossoms. To its right was a slightly smaller one with bone-white blossoms and to the left, a much smaller one with blossoms of red. They were beautiful. The trees rustled in the weak wind, accompanied by the chitter-chatter of squirrels and songbirds. The swing creaked softly as we rocked back and forth.

“Nanay is the only one in the neighborhood with flower trees in her backyard.” She always referred to herself in third person.

“They’re so beautiful, Nanay. How come none of the neighbors have any?”

A smile grew on her face. “Tatay brought them here when we moved from Cherry Hill. They were still so small.”

I smiled.

“He built the fence too. And the deck. And the shed”

My Tatay passed away nearly a decade ago.

“He sure took good care of you huh, Nanay?”

“Oh yes honey, Tatay took such good care of Nanay.”

“He loved you so much, Nanay.”

She didn’t respond, but nostalgia glowed in her eyes. The birds continued chirping and leaves rustled. A beetle droned by. The crisp afternoon wind was refreshing against our skin. I delicately put my hand over hers. It felt like latex over bone.

She looked at me with surprised delight. “Oh, hi Dominic!”

“Hi, Nanay! It’s so nice out here, huh?”

She kept smiling. “Nanay is the only one with flower trees in her backyard.”

“Which one is your favorite, Nanay?”

“The pink one. Tatay brought that one here when we moved from Cherry Hill. The white one, too.”

I forced a smile. “What about the red one?”

“Tatay’s boss gave us the red one. We planted all the trees ourselves when we moved here”

“Really?”

“Yeah! And he built all of this – the fence and the deck and the shed.”

“Wow, he really took good care of you, huh Nanay?”

“Oh, he took such good care of Nanay.”

The leaves still rustled. The songbirds still twittered. The deck swing creaked. A dove cooed. Her hand still in mine, I rubbed a thumb across her hand. Her skin moved in a way I feared would rip. She looked at me and smiled.

“Nanay is the only one with flower trees in her backyard.”

“They’re beautiful, Nanay.”

“They’re so big now. Tatay brought them over from Cherry Hill when they were still small.”

“Really? Which one’s your favorite?”

“The pink one. It was the smallest when we planted it, but now it's the biggest.”

Golden sunspots began glowing through the treetops. The wind stopped. Flecks of dust floated in suspense in the rays.

“Do you want to go inside, Nanay? The sun is in your face.”

“It's okay honey. I like to be out here.”

She sat quietly in the warm sun and closed her eyes.

Dominic Dimapilis is a writer and aspiring memoirist from Murrieta, California. He is currently attending his senior year at San Jose State University where he is majoring in creative writing and minoring in psychology. He intends to pursue his MFA at San Jose State specializing in creative nonfiction with a secondary in poetry. He focuses on essays that traverse the psychological aspects of the human condition and how the world around us molds our psyches. He has work forthcoming in The Oakland Arts Review.

The moment they let me walk the farm alone
I screamed it in the well.
I had a dog then, a long brown haired dog, who
brought mud through the foyer and sunroom and den.
On summer mornings we’d walk with him, Barky.
I could kick pebbles with my hard and tough barefeet
as the sun rose over the tufts of grandmother elk and
maple, announcing the day on my forehead.
Barky’s nose in the rivulets, the smell of drying fruit
through that honeyed monthlessness, yearlessness, breath.
Unlamenting, without compare, away from the alley
through which I now side-step, wedged between back then
and maybe later.

We’d run to the well after tumblers of juice
drained to drops except for the pulp, specks
instabaked to the plastic pink silos, the eastborne
summer sun torilla’d through the carrot curtains.
Remember when Javi broke his beaver tooth on the
stone wall of the well? Could you believe it? The
first time any of us ever tripped in our lives
thwack
just like that, perfect. Blood through too many fingers
as he howled the whole way home. How they sat us
on the checkered sofa which used to fit all five
and said “no more— no more races— couldn’t we see—
trying to get yourselves killed?” But, ha, there we were
sprinting like always, Javi smiling through his swollen lip.

When I could rent a car, years later,
I drove out to the well.
My hope: smudges of farm dirt on the linen of a suit
I no longer wanted. Setting eyes on the spread of pink house
I’d hear the faraway bell of voices now gone or changed.
In the clean cabin of the car along that ghostly road
I steeled myself to see condos or commercial limbs
or an expanse of faceless industry where the well once stood.
There’d be no more house or back shed or rolling rugs of crop;
cabbage and grape, cherry and lime.
But I needn’t have tried, for I couldn’t find
the farm at all. I’d forgotten the names. I was like
the black birds swimming above, circling nothing,
knowing it lay around the corner but never finding it there,
as the minutes clicked and gas eeked towards empty.

Though Elan Maier hails from the mean streets of Silicon Valley, he currently lives in New York City. His writing has been published in the Appalachian Review, Darling Records, and BoomPowSplat. He earned his masters in creative writing from Oxford University and his first novel was a finalist for the Screencraft Cinematic Book competition.

"Flower Trees from Cherry Hill" by Dominic Dimapilis

"The Well" by Elan Maier