On a shelf between photos of his family sits a row of dusty candles
a father never lights. The electricity’s out. In the hot summer night, bugs
find their way in the dark. In a scramble for matches, the father creeps
around the couch where his daughter’s sleeping. He’s thinking of the flour tortillas
he rolled all morning, and his little girl, who dreams of snow and ice,
and he thinks, too, about bugs coming through the windows, the pipes,
those gaps in the slats that he can’t control. Under the kitchen sink, a maze of pipes
and a small fire extinguisher block the emergency candles.
Sweating through his shirt, the father, praying to soak his feet in ice,
praying the food in the fridge won’t spoil and the smell won’t attract more bugs,
eats like a dog in the dark. A shred of tortilla
falls from his mouth into his slipper. The thought of waste keeps creeping,
so he keeps wolfing what’s left in the dark, spilling scraps bugs creep
inside to share. Without the glow of a stove light, his daughter can no longer pipe
frosting over the cakes she bakes in her dreams. Inside his slipper, the shred of tortilla
feels like a bunion against his toe. The father’s friends brought candles
and foil-wrapped trays the first night he slept alone. Crouching low with the bugs,
he searches for a candle under the sink. An hour passes without the freezer’s buzz; the ice
cubes weep back to water. His wife’s unworn bracelet lies on her nightstand, cool as ice.
Striking a match, the father remembers the officers—how they never crept
but nearly busted in before he opened the door. He thinks how even the bugs
entered his home quietly, how neither wiped their feet. What passes through the pipes
in a child’s brain at night? Who is there to hold a candle
through her dreams? Morning after morning, he wakes up and makes tortillas
with his pent-up passion. He hopes his daughter isn’t too warm, hopes for the tortillas
quilted around her to cool as she dreams. She slept through the night her mother was taken by ICE.
The father hopes for his daughter to paint his toenails the color of candlelight
again, for little sunsets she’ll wedge cotton balls between. Last time, for a week, he crept
on the balls and heels of his feet to keep her brushstrokes beautiful. These memories, steaming pipes
radiating his bones. He won’t touch the candles his friends gave him; it would bug
him to have to ignite their gifts. Emergency candle phallic in his hand—has someone bugged
his brain? Are they listening for fantasies of his deported wife? In this dark kitchen, a tortilla
is a full moon he prays to. He puts a match to the candle like a freshly packed pipe.
The wick crisps, but holds. An apartment appears all around. Wax melts like ice
cream down his knuckles. He holds the flickering flame to his daughter’s face, creeps
away when he sees the braids he poorly plaited into her hair. He floats the candle
around the kitchen, until every bug is crushed like ice or out of sight. He finishes
the last tortilla, bites it down to a waning crescent. The sound of an old bagpipe
starts its creepy hum from the freezer. The stove light swallows his candle.