The plane was like a shadow, all bundled up in the sky where the clouds did their fickle dance. “Like you,” said my husband, bitter, and then he disappeared, and I was alone, the hum of the engine like the taste of salt I still carried in my mouth from the sea, the wings kniving the clouds.

My journey had been a maze—through Belize’s jungle, where the spider monkeys swung on trees; through Mexico, where the Yucatan fell ingloriously under the weight of drunk tourists; through an old truck stop in Las Vegas, where I ate hamburgers and played the slot machines while listening to Patsy Cline.

My husband had said he couldn’t follow me anymore. He said our home would die without our flesh inhabiting it. As if we were oysters. As if there were pearls. All I’ve known is poverty.

The plane began to shake with turbulence, then took a nose dive into the sea. We plunged into the water, and the pressure built against my ears, the air thinned, water seeped through the window. I was dying.

This was my death: everything was the same. I was in the plane, alone. I would live my life as a ghost made of flesh and bone. I would bind myself with the tangled lines that made me return, while my country built walls and the junkies buried their dead, and I would cover the land with ashes.

Their gray would resurrect into sumacs that spread around my home, my husband would paint the walls green, and when I gave birth to our babies, I’d cut their cords weeping, tears the hum of a blue sea.

Bio: Kika Dorsey