Read The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert for Free Online Page B

She slapped the glass with the force of her body until her arms and hands stung.
    Inside the bakery, el viejito only had a second to recognize his limbs erasing themselves from time. Soon after, the donuts popped out of space and back into stardust. The pink spinning seats turned into nothingness. The infrastructure of pipes and little cucarachas blipped and blinked out of vision. Sylvia collapsed onto her knees in between yellow lines that were deleting themselves as though a backspace bar was clicking them off of the asphalt.
    On the bus ride home, Sylvia fell asleep and had a dream she was tripping over the border of Juárez and into El Paso. She looked behind her and saw the women who could never go home to their hijos or hijas.
    The first time I killed a man, I felt satisfaction. I knocked on the apartment window to my old room after putting a hole in his head and seeing the miniature version of myself disappear. Screams came from the bathroom, but I got Ruby’s attention. Ruby opened the window and told me she liked my curls. I asked her to give me the Super Nintendo control and I showed her the combos to press so she could be invincible as Orchid.

 
     
    CHURCH BUSH

    Sex advice filtered into my cranium from hidden Cosmo magazines. Men compared their balls to baby birds and licked spaghetti sauce off of nipples when they got home from work. There were thousands of manners in pleasing a man. I wasn’t interested in making men moan. I read through the magazines because I knew I wasn’t supposed to. I licked the perfume samples. I circled the faces that struck me. I cut out these faces and stuffed them into my pillow in hopes of seeing them when I fell into sleep. Wet dreams delivered themselves to me in black and white. I avoided living with the sensation between my legs at all costs. I crossed my legs and took in deep breaths until I thought about something else.
    The Baptist church provided me with pamphlets of sexual defiance. You are a piece of tape. The more times you stick yourself to others, the less you will stick to your soul mate. You are a piece of candy. If some random man sucks on the candy, then stuffs you back into the wrapper, you become a sticky mess for your perfect gem of a future husband. Don’t get sucked on and don’t tape yourself to boys in class. You don’t sin on Saturday and then get forgiveness on Sundays. Jesus has no time for a promiscuous and pious dichotomy. I was neither pious nor promiscuous. The Sunday school teacher still made us all sign an oath and stuff it into a box called the Virginity Package. She claimed she would deliver it to God in the coming weeks.
    Puberty created enchantment for older men with ramen noodle hair and teeth made for the gods. Puberty established shame. My period allowed me to draw the curtains for drama and made me feel like shit. Pads like diapers stuck to the bridge of my panties because I was petrified of tampons getting stuck inside me. This signifier of a fertile womb gushed out and sexuality remained sequestered in the deeper parts of my teenage brain. In public, my mom would shout at me when she saw a viejita who was slouching down to her knees. In her boxers and chanclas with socks, she yelled that my frame would hunch over like that if I didn’t straighten my back. No man would love my slouch or my sloppiness. Brush your hair and smile. When we got home, she apologized. Her mom used to say those words to her. She regretted saying them to me.
    I trembled when I heard songs about fucking on the radio. Church created a safety barrier from having to think about sex in a gratifying manner. Waiting until marriage was key. The concept of two virgins creating magical bodily connections on their wedding night was a prominent conversation at Sunday school. No one said anything about the messiness and malfunctions. No one described the odors or fart noises. Most of the time, I didn’t care about my sexuality, but I had my moments. I cared when I saw