The Great Divide

by Cristina Henríquez

He could show her places he had only heard about, could see them for the first time with her, the old cannons at Portobelo and the crashing waves at Pedasí, the highlands and the lowlands, the lush green mountains of Boquete and the beautiful dark jungle of Darién. He could show her the mangrove swamps whose roots had spread through the silt for thousands of years, the toucans and shimmering quetzals in the trees, the howler monkeys who moaned every morning at dawn, the glass frogs whose heart and tiny bones you could see through its skin, the silk moths and butterflies that alit on the leaves. He could buy her a bowl of sancocho or an empanada or a boiled tamale. They could sit outside listening to a tamborito in the indigo-orange light at dusk. It did not matter to him what they did. He just wanted to keep being around her, and for the simplest reason: All his life he had been lonely, but when he was with her he felt less alone.