LatinosUSA

a rather slim

but very big coloring book with thick pages

She opened it across her lap

and shuffled from

page to page while the child seated

besides her watched smiling

at the black and white drawings

awaiting to be filled with color

It followed a kind of storyline

with children who got lost in

a big forest and

talked to animals and made friends

but the speech bubbles above the

characters’ heads were empty

so she took a pen and

began to write in them

So where the children

met the bears in the forest

and pointed at them and said something

she filled the speech bubble

with, «You are disgusting.»

and the next with, «I wish you were never

born.»

and the next with, «I can’t bring

myself to love something that

ruined my life. I wish you just had

some nasty condition that the doctors

can do nothing about. I wish

you would die.»

«Die.»

«Just die.»

«Please.»

She put the pen away and

the child smiled at the symbols she’d

drawn on the page

and she looked back at the child’s face

and returned the smile