1. Thalia Pena
The dreamer inside of me waits. Waits in a waiting room where all the chairs are navy blue
plastic: very rarely comfortable. The clock mounted on the bare white wall ticks and
tocks endlessly, like a long car ride where the road stretches on before you curving along
for eternity.
The dreamer inside of me sits. Sits with a slightly slouched posture, twirling my fingers back
and forth, examining my hands as if they were tools I needed to use.
My eyes look. They look over every plain detail in that room: the utter blandness of the white
walls with the only points of interest being the places where the paint chips and ebbs
slightly in the light. Scanning, zooming, stopping to sharpen and focus on something,
anything that will command attention.
Listen, the distinct sound of silence except for that clock that doesn’t stop. Tick, tick, tock.
Seconds pouring out of the clock like the sweet, syrupy honey that clogged and
congealed when I tried to drench my tea with it this morning. The clock it clogs up the air
and the dreamer in me listens for a sound of life to drift seamlessly into the room and
give it the breath it so desperately lacks.
I whiff and capture flowers; a sweet scent, like sunflowers bursting with energy after one of
those tumultuous summer thunderstorms where the earth tries to quench a crackling scaly
day. The woman beside me turns and smiles as she notices me looking, smelling. I want
to tell her she smells like home, like the sunflowers that raised me.
I close my eyes and I can see the syrupy honey, I can smell it, I can almost taste it slowly
trickling down my throat clogging my words. I close my eyes and I can touch the
sunflowers, feel the soft petals that like silk, slipped through the air as I tried to blow
them away with my wishes. That stifling air that begged for the rain, begged to be rid of

2. that sticky feeling. My eyes are still closed and the clock starts to pitter patter further
away, the walls no longer bother me with their nauseating blandness, and I can feel the
slow trickle of that rain. There falls a drop on my nose, a drop here and there on that
petal, on that sunflower. I let the dreamer go: I tell the dreamer she can run into those
sunflowers once again and touch the dream. I open my eyes and look at the clock: five
minutes. I’ve only been waiting for five minutes.
No one has come out to let me know anything. It’s only been five minutes, just
five. I can feel my heart thumping in my chest, as if it was trying to break free; ripping
through my chest like the slivers of glass that ripped through her chest when the cars collided
and my world shifted, just tripped over itself knowing it had just been dealt this blow.
Talk. You never talk about important things not on the days when your sister leaves for
work in the morning and never makes it home because she’s gotten into a car accident. Some
delirious drunk driver has rammed into her car. I think I know the sound they made when
they collided; I think of it as a crunch that just lingered in the air afterwards spraying debris
of glass, of car parts everywhere. I didn’t say anything important this morning to her. Maybe
I mumbled something about needing orange juice. I can’t remember. She was walking out the
door as I watched honey drip into my tea. I watched honey pool at the bottom of my cup
instead of looking up. Instead of seeing her face: clean of blood, void of gashes and cuts.
Honey settled in my cup as my sister walked out the door in one piece for the last time. I sit
here in this waiting room only imagining her broken and bruised as I feel the honey
clinging and settling at the bottom of my throat.
I can’t imagine a world without her. I’ve been sitting here for 15 minutes and all I’ve
done is dream. Dream and remember everything about my life with her up until now, this

3. point in space where we have shattered once more. I remember the first time we broke;
sitting in that sunflower field as the clouds began to darken. She looked so dangerous, so
wild: her eyes puffy and swollen, her hair flecked out in a wild mane, her dress torn and
dirty. I wanted to console her; like when we were really little and I would pluck sunflowers
to carefully touch the places where she had fallen and cut herself. The sunflowers were the
cure, they could heal anything I told her. They didn’t heal her that day we stood in the field
and she wailed, emptied out the reserves of her heart. I wanted to console her, so desperately
wanted to know what was wrong. So, I reached for a sunflower but she said no. Looked me
in the eye, as if the sun had withered away in her soul, said they won’t heal me. They won’t
heal anyone and then she collapsed. Rain exploded from the gray clouds and I ran, ran
through the sunflowers all the way home. I found momma dead in her bedroom. She had
killed herself as I played in the flowers, as my sister slept in the next room.
It’s been 25 minutes. I sit in this waiting on this navy blue chair and just twirl my fingers.
I close my eyes and try to remember the sunflowers before momma died. I try so hard to
remember. If I remember, Ava will too. As the doctors work furiously over her trying to fix
it, fix her broken body. I try to remember so I can fix her damaged soul, take beautiful
marigold petals and use them as bandages and heal her, heal us both from the memory of
death. She’s my sister, my twin, a feeling I get she feels too. Let me heal you, please. Let me
heal her, I beg to the dreamer inside of me.
“I’m the thinker. You, the dreamer,” she tells me once in the field. Says to me that that’s
the thing she loves about me the most. I dream, I’m always dreaming. And I ask her if they
aren’t the same, if thinking and dreaming aren’t identical the way we are. Laughs, she
laughs, says thinking is logical, thinking is bound. Dreaming is infinite. I don’t understand. I

4. want to tell her she’s silly, it doesn’t make any sense reasoning about it like that. But, it starts
to rain, and it hasn’t rained in months. We’d been sitting out in the field because the clouds
had morphed from pearly white puffs to an indistinguishable grey mass. The rain was
coming, and it had, just then, after Ava told me I was a dreamer. We leapt through the air,
gliding through the flowers in our billowy white dresses like ballerinas gliding through a
golden stage. The rain quenched my skin, kissed the flowers, danced with my sister’s wild
hair, and set us all free. The following year on that same date, Ava would find me in the
field and it would rain. Rain so viciously, I could barely see as I ran to the house. Rain so
hard, I wouldn’t be able to see the steps and trip and gash my knee, have it drizzle blood as I
made my way up the stairs to momma’s room. Open the door and see her limp hand fallen
off the side of the bed. Drip blood on the marigold bed sheets as I scream out to her:
is it ok, momma, is it going to be ok?
The dreamer inside of me waits. Waits in this waiting room for a doctor to tell me Ava is
fixed, she is alive. The wounds on her body have been treated and dressed with bandages.
The clock has stopped ticking without mercy, it has stopped ringing in my ears. You can
see her now the doctor says. She will be alright he says.
The dreamer inside of me sits. Sits in her room and watches her sleep peacefully,
recuperating, as I twirl strands of her hair between my fingers.
My eyes look. They look at the strands of hair and how they jumble and lead to her messy
mane. Her tangled mane that remains as beautiful as ever, as wild as ever. It’s Ava, my
beautiful Ava. This accident hasn’t changed her, hasn’t taken her away from me.
I listen to my heartbeat. My heart has settled at last in my chest. It pitter patters now like the
last remaining drops of a storm, falling calmly and without worry. I am without worry.

5. I open my eyes and feel the tears pool in my eyes. Can feel them slowly make their way
down my face and taunting me. There are no sunflowers here, not even the woman that
smelled like them is here anymore. It’s me, it’s been me for hours now in this waiting
room by myself. Tears continue to stream down my face, I can barely see. I hiccup and
can still feel the honey sitting complacent in my throat. I don’t even remember what color
shirt she was wearing. I don’t remember what color momma was wearing either. I’m
tired of waiting, of dreaming. I scan the room through my drenched eyes and I see the
doctor. He’s going to tell me now about Ava. He’s healed her, fixed her. The dreamer
inside of me says to him finally: is it ok, Ava, is it going to be ok?