Daniel Barrios
Summer 2024 | Prose
Neighbors
When Green died, the block was so quiet you could hear the crinkled autumn leaves brushing the cold pavement. Green wasn’t his real name, but that was his color. He loved Sprite and could always be seen holding a can, calmly sipping from a straw. Although we never hung out together, we were neighbors on North Avenue.
One night, while I was taking out the trash, Green was smoking on his front steps. “Want some?” he asked, ashing the tip of his number.
“No,” I said.
“Respect.”
“Are you on TikTok?” I asked.
“No, why?”
“There’s this fisherman who said he saw a mermaid,” I said. “You believe that?”
“In mermaids? Or the one he seen?”
“Both,” I said.
“Look, where we live,” Green said, “in the hood, believing in mermaids keeps you alive.”
“So you believe in them?”
“Anything’s possible,” he said.
“He’s seen it more than once.”
“Then it must be true.”
“I believe it,” I said.
That was the last time we spoke before he was shot in front of the bodega in broad daylight. He was known on the block for pushing packs of loud in quiet ways.
We were neighbors.
He left behind two kids, ages six and nine, and his partner, who was expecting a third child. A candle lighting in the shape of his initials was organized in front of the bus stop where he was murdered. Open cans of Sprite were set up like bowling pins. White Castle sliders and Life Saver gummies were stacked next to the sodas, and a framed photo of Green smiling in his Jordan 1s, sitting on the passenger side of a car, holding up his hand in solidarity.
daniel barrios (he/him/él) is a Dominican/Puerto Rican writer and educator from Staten Island, New York. His essays are published in The Bitchin' Kitsch and Assignment Magazine and his fiction is published or forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, The Brooklyn Review and Querencia Press. He holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Southern New Hampshire University where he received a residency scholarship. He is the winner of The Brooklyn Review's 2023 Fiction Contest: This Time It's Personal!
daniel has been awarded residencies through the PERIPLUS collective, Under the Volcano in Tepoztlán, Mexico, Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He is working on a collection of stories.