When the Tides Held the Moon

by Venessa Vida Kelley

“Safe,” I repeated, looking down at his conviction with envy. “In my whole dumb life, I’ve never felt as safe anywhere as I feel sitting on a metal grate twenty feet above the ground with you.”

“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.”

“Nah, brother. I been in the sideshow business for ten years, six of them with the twins. Men sweet on other men, ladies sweet on ladies, folks sweet on nobody at all—who cares so long as everyone’s living happy and hurtin’ no one?”

I’d dropped my English because Spanish has so many words for declaring love, and I needed to use them all before it was too late. And though his tears were invisible in water, we both wept to the sound of promises whispered like prayers through the glass about a future where time couldn’t chase us, where my heart would beat for him for as long as he wanted it—until the oceans boiled and the rivers dried.