Venus is the planet of love.

I read once that the heat on Venus creates a pressure so intense that standing on Venus would feel like the pressure felt 900 meters deep in Earth’s oceans.

Crazy right?

Sounds just like love.

My mother brought me a small potted cactus the other day. “Mira Geni, it looks like a little star.” I placed it on the windowsill of my kitchen, right above the sink.

It’s the only bit of green in my sunny yellow kitchen.

I like to stare at it whenever I do the dishes.

Which is twice a day to wash Butch-Cassidy’s bowl and to clean out the little container of food my mom drops off on Sundays.

She trusts me now to eat the food she brings me without her watchful eyes.

Before she would sit across from me at my bubblegum pink table and watch me as I forced myself to eat.

The color of the table seemed to bother her every time. She’d look down at it like it offended her by being so pink.

“Ay mi’ja.” She’d sigh and then order me to eat.

Love.

I miss the company.

There are bread crumbs on the counter from the peanut butter and honey sandwich I nibbled on earlier. I take the crusts and leave them in the bowl for the Wild Bunch, the family of pigeons that took up residence in my pantry. They won’t leave, and I haven’t kicked them out, so I just feed the bread and give them water and it seems like it’s working out okay.

Today I have a full sink, because for some reason I told Steven I would cook for him.

I was sitting on my couch watching a sappy movie and trying not to cry as the main characters finally have their first kiss when Steven called me.

“Are you crying?” He asked.

“No.” I sniffed.

“What’s wrong? Are you ok? Should I come over?” I could hear the panic in his voice.

Panic which is not unfounded given that he was the person who found me in a pool of my own vomit on my kitchen floor. In my sunny kitchen with my lemon yellow walls and my bubblegum pink table and mismatched chairs. My happy little room the scene of my attempted suicide.

Hearing your best friend crying by herself with only the menagerie of animals she keeps to protect her would be unsettling at the least.

“No, I’m fine. I’m sorry. I’m watching a made for TV movie and they’ve finally found love.” I assure him.

“Can I come over to be sure?” No one really trusts me.

I don’t blame them.

“Come over.”

He came over and sat on my couch with me. We watched the end of the movie in silence. I watched. He watched me out of the corner of his eye. I did not look good.

I’d pulled my hair up in two messy buns, rinsed my face and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. But the water couldn’t rinse away the dark circles and hollows under my eyes from lack of sleep and from eating the bare minimum to survive.

“This movie is terrible.” He said. He reached down to rub Butch-Cassidy’s belly. Butch laid next to him after jumping all over him when he arrived.

After me, Steven is Butch’s favorite person in the world. He only likes my mom because she occasionally feeds him scraps.

“I know.” The movie ends and we sit there in silence.

“You know what I miss?” He asked me.

“What’s that?” I turned the TV off and shifted to face him.

“When you would get all ethnic and make the sweet mole with rice and homemade tortillas.”

I rolled my eyes. “‘Ethnic.'” He laughed.

“You know what I mean. You get all, ‘my mother taught me and her mother taught her and her mother taught her and the great eagle taught them all’ when you make it. I miss it.”

“‘Great eagle,’ mas pendejo,” I mutter and smile in spite of myself.

“Great eagle or whatever your people believed in.”

“Oh my gosh Steven I’m about to sick Butch-Cassidy on you if you don’t stop.” We laugh as we look at Butch-Cassidy, belly up on the floor at Steven’s feet, snoring.

“Your ancestors demand the sweet brown mole… and handmade tortillas…” He trailed off.

Cooking requires effort.

Cooking requires care and a love for the food and for the ones who will consume it.

Cooking requires a desire to give some kind of shit.

Love means giving some kind of shit.

I exhale slowly. And watch him. He looks nervous. Like he pushed too far. Like the suggestion of me doing anything that required effort may have already mentally exhausted me.

“Well, I am a really good cook,” I whisper.

He chuckled. “I guess.”

“We’ll see if I feel like it and maybe I’ll invite you over.” I smile at him and we sit quietly until he says it’s late and heads home.

Because Venus reflects so much sunlight, it is usually the brightest planet in the night sky.

I wonder if it’s because of this brightness that they decided this planet would best represent love in the night skies. Love makes you glow.

I stir the pot of mole and turn the heat low as I start on the dishes.

13. first kiss, a planet, a type of plant, bread crumbs

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