Next Year in Havana

by Chanel Cleeton

We’re all citizens of no country now, all orphans of circumstance.

My mother has no time for revolutions; they wreak havoc with her balls and teas.

Stranger still to be a woman in Cuba—we vote, but what does a vote mean when election outcomes are a foregone conclusion?

We are useless birds in a gilded cage while our countrywomen serve in the government, while some plot revolution.

Love is for the poor. In our world, you marry for status, for wealth, for family.

This is not the sort of man who waits for permission, but a man of action, a man of deep abiding passion.

Why do people always seize on the spark that can peter out as the measure of a relationship?”

I pretend I don’t spend more time on my hair and makeup than normal, that I’m not preening, but I do and I am.

There’s something intimate about the scent of soap and man, layers stripped away between us.

If helplessness is my Scylla, then the solution is most definitely Charybdis.

Pablo is dead, and Havana is dead, and I am dead.

My baby has already lost one parent to this revolution. It’s up to me alone to keep our child safe.

“When you love something you don’t count the cost.”

You’re not giving up, just giving yourself a better chance to change the system in a world where you don’t have to play by their rules.”

This island will break your heart if you let it.

The French Revolution has come to Cuba.

I prefer to rely on the constancy of the earth beneath our feet. It doesn’t care whose blood spills onto its soil or whose boots march upon its grass—it

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is decide to leave when it is no longer wise to stay.”

I prefer the memories I keep in my heart, rather than the harsh reality of what it has become.”

And for some, the love we cannot have is the most powerful one of all.