If Ileana’s Desires Materialized

At long last they have killed her, those people she came to despise after she wanted to help them after she spent a lifetime calling them vermin, the rat-sheep of communism.

But the hatred of people whose little-in-the-world is snatched by an overweight American is slow to boil. First she said she would employ them, and they preferred this to hanging her from her neck from the 2nd storey window that showered her with green mountain sunlight mornings as a girl. They waited: they learned her habits of words, smelled the sting of her ringing contempt, so much like the smell of pig’s blood. 

Finally they agreed: she did not hire us out of guilt for her own misdeeds, but pity.

Ileana’s death looked very different from the inside, for her eyes were damaged by salt during the boatlift, and she could only see immaterial things. Instead of a fat woman dragged by seven hungry hands to a barn where the best machete had been sharpened to the point of mercy, Ileana saw the golden figure of liberty dragged before God and Mary with arms open wide, and Castro was there looking well-abashed, and Elian, still young and unmade, nodded to her, and she got a smile from Ronald Reagan whose head was on the shirtless body of handsome Ernesto who used to wash the car a donkey now drags through cobblestone streets — and the donkey was there, stomping his hooves, and the car winked a long-dead headlight, and the chickens clapped and garbled, and an old woman with dust in the lines of her face, still beautiful in a bright flowered dress, danced a dance no one remembers the name of, and laughed.

1. Communism

2. Guilt

3. Desires