4

Leila

            Right before she left for the trip from which she never returned, my mother told me, “God has put our people’s dreams into your eyes.” I wondered which people she meant. On Danyx, Grandmother Dey’s planet, people say that a storyteller is like a vine. It spans the space between the trees like a gigantic spider’s web. The vines travel through the forest from one end of Danyx to the other, to every nook and cranny, and there is nothing that the vine does not know about life on Danyx. That is the fate of the storyteller. Then my mother added in a whisper, brushing her cheek against mine, “Your Grandmother Dey’s heritage has blended with something that came from me, something that goes all the way back to Pallas. Through people’s secrets you’ll see right into their souls.”

When I met Eden, through our whole first year of calm, I could see through his secrets, but I had not yet learned to see his soul. I bribed him with Goal. I knew how far we would slip, even then. From the first day, I loved the violence in him. I thought it matched my passion. I anticipated our collisions, foresaw each escalation, even the end.

First I thought it was all my fault.

I left.

It wasn’t.

Then I inverted that first thought: The monster was Eden!

On Earth, in Berlin, I met Ray.

He wasn’t.

Ray struck me as the most gentle being I had ever met. Passive-aggressive was not part of my vocabulary.

What is it about memory that comes back and eats your soul? I sing memory and I can hear it burrow into me.

I understand them both now.

It doesn’t help.