Nadxieli Nieto Hall

The Year I Called Him Alex

We moved his Alexithymia from one room to another, each time his face cracking slightly under its marble. Week after week, I manhandled it, rubbing my bluing tips over the tick-tock veins. Four weeks in, he looked like Roquefort; at five weeks, like Alexander. In the evenings, I could hear the crumbling, his pasty hands hiding the rebuilding. Sometimes I took it for the rustling of wall-bound mice; other times I started from sleep and yelped. “Dog” he would exclaim and patting my head put me down to sleep. How I slept, I don’t know. Most likely on my side. There I could hold onto the edge of the bed, the only solid surface in the whole goddamn house.

Nadxieli Nieto Hall is the Managing Editor of NOON, and lead book designer and editor at Nieto Books. Formerly, she was the Editor-in-Chief of Salt Hill Journal. Her writing has appeared in The New York Tyrant, West Wind Review, Dirty Durty Diary, Clamor, and Washington Square Review, among others. She lives in Brooklyn.