Clap When You Land

A queen offers her hand to be kissed, & can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time.

Fight until you can’t breathe, & if you have to forfeit, you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win.

Can you be from a place you have never been? You can find the island stamped all over me, but what would the island find if I was there? Can you claim a home that does not know you, much less claim you as its own?

Maybe anger is like a river. Maybe it crumbles everything around it. Maybe it hides so many skeletons beneath the rolling surface.

But one thing I learned from the Saints, when the crossroads are open to you, you must decide a path. I will not stand still while the world makes my choices.

The body is a funny piece of meat. How it inflates and deflates in order to keep you alive. But how simple words can fill you up or pierce the air out of you.

You do not let your words stunt unknown possibilities.

The patron saint of the ocean is known for containing many parts of herself: she is a nurturer, but she is also a ferocious defender. & so I remember that to walk this world you must be kind but also fierce.

Mami wanted me to be a lady: sit up straight, cross my ankles, let men protect me. Papi wanted me to be a leader. To think quick & strike hard, to speak rarely, but when I did, to always be heard. Me? Playing chess taught me a queen is both: deadly & graceful, poised & ruthless. Quiet & cunning. A queen offers her hand to be kissed, & can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time. But what happens when those principles only apply in a game? & in the real world, I am not treated as a lady or a queen, as a defender or opponent but as a girl so many want to strike off the board.

How can you lose an entire person, only to gain a part of them back in someone entirely new?

If I say those words, if I snap apart the air with them, whatever is binding me together will split too.

She is a nurturer but she is also a ferocious defender. Remember that to walk this world, you must be kind but also fierce

Never, ever, let them see you sweat, negra. Fight until you can’t breathe, & if you have to forfeit, you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win.

Papi was a man split in two, / playing a game against himself. // But the problem with that / is that in order to win, you also always lose.

So he created a theater of his life / & got lost in all the different roles he had to play.

Swimming might be the closest to flying a human being can get. There is something about your body displacing water in order to propel through space that makes you feel Godtouched. That makes me understand evolution, that we really must have crawled up from the sea.

I am beginning to learn that life-altering news is often like a premature birth: ill-timed, catching someone unaware, emotionally unprepared & often where they shouldn’t be:

There is an artist my mother loved, Juan Gabriel, who was once asked in an interview if he was gay. His reply: What's understood need not be said. I remember how Mami's eyes fluttered to me like a bee on a flower acknowledging the pollen is sweet.

Dreams are like the pieces of fluff that get caught in your hair; they stand out for a moment, but eventually you wash them away, or long fingers reach in & pluck them out & you appear as what everyone expects.

I wrap myself tight around the feelings I cannot share, an unopened present, a gift no one wants.

Is this what sisterhood is? A negotiation of the things you make possible out of impossible requests?

Things you can buy with half a million dollars: a car that looks more like a space creature than a car. A designer platinum purse to carry a small dog. A small dog. A performance by your favorite musical artist for your birthday. A diamond-encrusted bottle of Dominican rum. A mansion. A yacht. A hundred acres of land. Houses, but not homes. All four years of college or beautician school & certificate. Five hundred flights to the Dominican Republic. A half million Dollar Store chess sets, with their accompanying boxes. A hundred thousand copies of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Apparently a father.

If you asked me what I was, & you meant in terms of culture, I’d say Dominican. No hesitation, no question about it. Can you be from a place you have never been? You can find the island stamped all over me, but what would the island find if I was there? Can you claim a home that does not know you, much less claim you as its own?

This whole time she's swallowed her words like bitter pills not realizing they were slow-drip poison.

If you are not from an island. you cannot understand what it means to be of water: to learn to curve around the bend, to learn to rise with rain, to learn to quench an outside thirst while all the while you grow shallow until there is not one drop left for you. I know this is what Tia does not say. Sand & soil & sinew & smiles: all bartered. & who reaps? Who eats? Not us. Not me.

Who knew death must be so damn polite?

It is easy in a moment like this to want to speak over this woman, to tell Tía there is nothing more we can do, to say out loud the woman is lucky that her lungs still draw breath. But I learned young, you do not speak of the dying as if they are already dead. You do not call bad spirits into the room, & you do not smudge a person's dignity by pretending they are not still alive, & right in front of you, and perhaps about to receive a miracle. You do not let your words stunt unknown possibilities.

Onward. Always onward. I blow her a kiss across the linoleum, & whisper blessings under my breath, divide a piece of God from my heart for her to carry. I know she does the same for me.

I tug on my graduation dress, that was my priest meeting dress, that is now my visa interview dress. I am clothed in beginnings & endings. A lucky & unlucky garment. But isn't every life adorned with both?

I will not stand still while the world makes my choices. This Yahaira will learn what carving your own way means.