Rosalind Aparicio-Ramirez

VISIONS OF NEXT PLACES.

WATER. The zoo aquariums’ glass walls create an optical illusion, making the floor appear convex. On the other side of the glass, patrons’ faces ripple in dancing light. Without noticing, their bodies begin to sway in time, too, mimicking a swim. The floor looks spongy, soft and pale, with ridges and a hole in the center. So it is no surprise to learn that that floor, just like the rest of the earth, was built on the back of ancient, dormant water creatures, awakening for the first time in a long while. They twist to stretch their muscles and find their skin has grown taut from the soil and concrete time and people caked onto it. This is an unfamiliar sensation and so they begin to flail, everything and everyone rolling off of their backs, sliding into the water, yes, water, that has been sitting below their bellies this whole time. They, some with fins, or scales, whiskers, and dark eyes, begin to mingle around the single ocean, shedding pieces of land as they move around the sphere of their planet. 

WEATHER. The wind sings in low notes, aggressively brushes back the trees from the hard-headed earth. In a lulling moment, on the other side of a screen door, a hummingbird stops to drink from a mallow, then is sucked away.  The winds begin to curl, thicker and tighter than the winds that flattened the Lowe’s further into town a few years back. The curl becomes a funnel, and the process is repeated many times until there is a chorus of otherworldly bellows. What mouths could sing and eat everything in their path at once? There is no choice but to watch, watch the funnels battle each other, dance with each other, fall in line, converge into one. There are directionless rains, and clouds climb down and up again; they look calico and it is impossible to tell if we are in a funnel, by one, or on the other side of one. We move, but in which direction, and to which destination, is unclear. 

ROADS. The epicenters of earthquakes are far from any fault lines, but very close to us. The popcorn-ed ceiling of the living room crumbles into dust on our shoulders, and we run outside, avoiding the constant strikes of thunder piercing black clouds. Each bolt cracks the earth it hits; each quake creases and twists the ground. The road and us can’t find each other. We catch up with the driveway and get into a car, pulling away as quickly as we can to get to the highway. It looks back at us now, outstretching its lanes like fingers for us to grasp, trying to hold steady until we are able to climb on. We barely make it. Just ahead, lightning strikes an epicenter. The road launches upright. Malleable from lightning heat, it mimics the bolt and splits into branches, rooting itself further and further into the sky. Its pavement cracks and peels, turning into organic material, bark, then back again to pavement. It is suffering a crisis of identity at the molecular level, and it is preventing us from escaping the collapse of everything around us. We cannot travel down this road anymore, but it continues on, growing, tracing the path of the lightning bolt that birthed it, propelled by the force of the earthquake under its skin. The road gives way to no other place for us to arrive to. Alone, it pierces through the atmosphere, permanently deviating from this system of things. Its trunk is concrete strong, its exits shoulders, streets hands and fingers, all growing up, up, and cradling a radar picture of blues, greens, and yellows. It is greeted in this next world by moderate rains.