Jessica Villar's micro-short story Portal Divino was published in Rio Grande Review (Issue 60, 2025), a bilingual journal of contemporary literature and art published by the Department of Creative Writing at UT El Paso.
Jessica describes Portal Divino: Two girls play on a winter morning as danger quietly gathers around them, until a domestic accident turns play into catastrophe. At the center of the narrative is the family dog, whose behavior unsettles the usual ways we interpret animals. While we often humanize animals when their actions appear heroic or protective, the story asks what happens when an animal’s behavior cannot be read as positive—when it seems to gesture toward intention, agency, or even self-destruction. The narrative lingers in that uneasy space, questioning where instinct ends, where human projection begins, and what we are willing—or unwilling—to recognize as “human.”
¡Felicidades, Jessica!