From the Eagle’s Talons

You used to imagine these writing residencies as portals, have tried to describe it, once, to Alejandro. It’s about manifesting, like dreaming out loud, you said. Mostly, it had been true. You’d ripple with kinetic energy during each hour-long drive to Santa Fe, feeling adrenaline shock you to life. This is the next phase, a small voice inside you promised and—during all those drives—you’ve never once questioned her, this voice inside of you.

You laughed with that higher self, allowed her invisible hand to guide your music, hitting shuffle as a form of divination, unrolling your future down miles of desert highway. The first residency was all grunge and folk rock, gritty in your speakers as your tiny white hatchback crunched through ice-crystal highways, swerving into the grooves of snowpack. The second residency had been filled by Kesha’s clownish pop vibrating into your skeleton, telling you enjoy the joyride.

But this Fourth of July—the eve of your last writing residency—was different. You tumbled from open Uber doors in Minneapolis to airport shuttles, from window seats on sun-bleached runways into the cars of Alejandro’s childhood friends, to guest rooms you never knew existed—not until Alejandro’s self-deportation.

Soon, you will wedge into a stuffed U-Haul as if stowing away from your country with last-minute Craigslist couches, foggy mirrors, pieces of his childhood room. You and his stepfather will inch four hours across the desert, dodging the flexing fists of tarantulas that clutch at the road like disembodied hands, until El Paso bleeds into Juárez and your heart is a white cross rising with the letters on the mountain that looms between the halved cities.

The portals, here, are conversations—casual cries for help from friends that feel Alejandro’s absence, how he is still American in his stepfather’s memories. As you pass through the rusted, broken arms of border fencing glittering with metallic thorns, your father-in-law points skyward. You wanted to see an eagle for July fourth, right? Good luck! Above us, an eagle lurches, two sparrows locked in its talons. For a second, it comforts you, until your stomach sinks with realization: We are the sparrows.

As you pull up to border control, your father-in-law adjusts the a/c, pockets his worry stone, twists and untwists the vents. Feel free to listen to music, he suggests, his voice shaky, but the radio has been silenced for hours now, and soon he is instructing don’t look any agents in the eyes, keep the windows rolled up, talk in English if they bother you, and music, you know now, was never about spiriting away into your future—it was about listening to that higher-self in your head, to come closer to the version you are trying so hard to become, so you listen even harder, but all you can hear is your pulse pinging closer to Alejandro’s hummingbird heart, and every shred of music, the sparrows fighting against the eagle’s talons, the sound of your own voice—everything has fallen static silent.

Brianna G. Reed is a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts.