stripes (pinata song ) by Monique Quintana | Flash Fiction | #thesideshow

stripes (pinata song )

You are color strips. They go around your body in stripes. They are your muscles, your patches. The hands that make you are hands. You watch them go. You watch them make you.

You hang in a bright bright place. Lit on a wire. You watch them come and go. Pushing. Yellow hair and blue eyes and brown hair and brown eyes and everything. Music hums in your ears. Air. Your horns point out like stars. You match boxes. Color candy sits below you. Little things stand under you.

A creature comes to get you. Off this string. Off this wire.

You’re set on top of things and you see things. These little things, these little creatures in skin strips. In stripes.  Girls. Their name is girls. Their name is boys. They move. They laugh. They glow. A girl. She comes and looks you in the eye. She touches your face. She picks you up and shakes you and feels you go. Many little things drum inside you. Your bones. Your insides. The girl. Sweet. You watch her. She goes in circles around. She’s striped in dark. Her hair. Black hair that she loops around on her finger. Maggie. Her name is Maggie. The boys and girls line up for a clown. They get their faces painted in patches. Black eye patches unicorns, fireflies, and rainbows. The beautiful one sits under a tree. Her mouth is an open bud, a flower bud under a shade. A little tree.

They shake you. They feel on your flesh. Your stripes. They hang you back on a wire. And you can see yourself with the beautiful one. She patches up your stripes with warm water. She breaths air in your lungs. You live together in a far away place and she is yours. For a thousand years, you hear her song. Her hum. You watch her braid her long black hair. But now, just now, you hang on this wire. They little ones kneel before you. Pay homage to you.

About the Author

Monique Quintana is a contributing Beauty and Fashion Editor of Luna Luna and blogs at razorhousemagazine.com. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing Fiction from CSU Fresno, and her work has appeared in Huizache, Bordersenses, and The Acentos Review, among others. She is a member of the Central Valley Women Writers of Color collective, the Latinx Authors Collective (LACO), a Squaw Valley Community of Writers Fellow, and this summer, she will be attending the Sundress Academy of the Arts Residency in Knoxville, TN.