The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Sometimes you have to let people have their own space—​even when you are in the same room with them.

“I want to live in the calmness of the morning light.”

I just didn’t understand the human heart. Fito’s heart should have been broken. But it wasn’t.

Somehow, because she was all over the map, it helped me to not be all over the map.

Maybe that’s what life was. You zigged and you zagged and zigged and zagged some more.

“Why’d you go back?” I asked. “She’s my mother.” Sam put in her two cents. “She’s toxic. You do know that, don’t you?” “Yeah,” Fito said. “Doesn’t change the fact that she’s my mother.”

“I didn’t hate my mother,” he said. “I thought I hated her, but I didn’t. I wanted to help her—​but I didn’t know how. I just didn’t.”