When the Tides Held the Moon

Don’t waste your damn life trying to smother a spark what wants to be a blaze.

To give you my name is to give you the last of myself, and humanity has taken enough from me. My name is my own. You may not have it.

Revealing your truth is like swimming, Benigno. It may not come naturally or easily. But in still waters, it can be learned," he said firmly, his hair painting a rusty halo around his shoulders.

Salt water has healing properties. That is why our tears are made of it. Why should you hold them in?

I thought of what Igor said about Rio and me, water and fire. Whether or not humanity deserved it, Rio was the sort to pour himself out in compassion for humans. Me? I wanted to burn down the world

I have given it some thought, and what I think is this: Guarding your heart because it has been broken is not una estupidez.

It is the simple truth of every creature with a soul. You are not your body, Benigno.

And if I was you, I’d take a long look at my pale-ass face in the mirror and think about how that Caribbean kid crossed an ocean for a slice of freedom America ain’t never gonna give him.

Lo que no se dice, no se sabe,

It was fascinating work, easy to disappear into if you had a brain full of noise like mine.

And the more I learn about Benigno, the more he teaches me to swim.

I tried hopelessly to brand him into my mind. Hopelessly, because, when it came to losing people, the more you tried to make them permanent on the shorelines of your recollection, the more time eroded them away.

Ave María, if I had a jitney for every condescending compliment a white man gave me whenever I did something too hard for them to do

Perhaps the Currents brought us here because they knew we would meet.” My face flushed. “Why do you say that?” He looked pityingly up at me through the iron bars. “Because we are both caged.

I stood back to survey my work like an artist who’d mixed the powdered pigment of his hope with linseed oil and painted with it. Then, I draped the tarp over the tank for the last time and punched out.

I didn’t usually like poking around the old

You do not remember your family?' ...'Tití tried to find them after the storm...[E]veryone figured my family got washed out in the rapids with the hundreds of other boricuas who disappeared.' Río held himself like he was bracing against a chill. 'You speak as though it does not pain you.' 'I ain't gonna cry about it,' I said, tucking San Cristóbal back into my shirt. 'You can't change what happened. Better to just accept it and move on.' 'Benigno.' He brought himself upright again. 'Do you mean to say you do not cry?' ...'What does that matter?' 'It -matters,' he insisted. 'Salt water has healing properties. That is why our tears are made of it. Why should you hold them in?

be. And it shouldn’t take me having to vouch for his soul to justify his right to be free.

I took it. Balanced solidly on his one leg, he helped me to my feet.

Merciful Neptune, have you no compassion for yourself?” The answer, we both knew, was no,

like time is a thing you can outswim if you fill it up with enough doing.

Benigno, why in the Seven Seas should it matter who we love?

Lulu’s face drooped with the exhaustion of every mother whose nene caused more problems than she had fixes for.