ADENIUM — MARÍA ALEJANDRA BARRIOS VÉLEZ
/When my mom got married, she put a dessert flower in her hair, not caring that it was toxic. She got married and the day after the flower kept blooming, spreading through her tangled curls until it was a cascade of bright pink. When she was stressed she would shed the petals, and we would have to sweep the floors, tell the neighbors that we were sorry—but Mami was like that, a flower parade, a dandelion scattering pieces of her wherever she went. When she died, she didn’t want to be buried with her flowers, they were a burden, the reason for her divorce, of all her losses—she instructed me to pluck one, the first one from her wedding day that sat just above her ear, I ripped it out too distressed to be subtle, and on her last breath, the flower vanished to ashes, running through my fingers, turning into dust.
María Alejandra Barrios Vélez is a writer born in Barranquilla, Colombia. She has an MA in Creative Writing from The University of Manchester and currently lives in Brooklyn. Her stories have been published in places such as Hobart Pulp, Reservoir Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, Jellyfish Review, Lost Balloon, Shenandoah Literary, Vol.1 Brooklyn, El Malpensante, Moon City, Fractured Lit, and SmokeLong Quarterly. She was the 2020 SmokeLong Flash Fiction Fellow and her work is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2022. Her work has been supported by organizations such as Vermont Studio Center, Caldera Arts Center, and the New Orleans Writing Residency.
