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No digas nada. Dogs tame easier than people. It is why there will always be yanquis trying to convince you you’re a mutt instead of a man. Don’t you believe them, Benigno.
“We are here by the ineffable movements of fate,” said Madam Navya with liquored-up authority. “I’ve long believed we were all of us warring kinsmen in a past life, brought back together in this life that we might yet learn how not to kill each other.”
“Emmett’s opinion don’t matter on account o’ his oddity being the gigantic stick up his arse,” Vera deadpanned.
“It is the simple truth of every creature with a soul. You are not your body, Benigno.”
Every time he dug out bits of me to redeem, I worried the dirt it kicked up wouldn’t rinse off later.
How could I explain it to him? How cruel his kindness felt sometimes? Brown, Puerto Rican, and inverted, I was a walking composite of undesirable traits, and every time he said I was something more, I wanted to shake him, make him understand that I couldn’t survive in this stupid town if I believed I was better than the petty allowance of scraps I lived on. More treacherous than hoping for a seat in Ornamental was believing in a world where Río wanted me.
Don’t waste your damn life trying to smother a spark what wants to be a blaze.”
Back in my room, I satisfied the momentary winding-down-for-the-night requirement by draping my bones over the duvet fully dressed.
Me after work everyday
if I had a jitney for every condescending compliment a white man gave me whenever I did something too hard for them to do themselves.
“Río,” I whispered, out of breath, and not from wheezing. “You make me feel like I’m kissing the tides.” “Benigno,” he whispered back. “You make me feel like I am holding the moon.”
