With the Fire on High

by Elizabeth Acevedo

And sometimes focusing on what you can control is the only way to lessen the pang in your chest when you think about the things you can’t.

It’s wild to miss someone so much, and yet in order to care for them you have to constantly say goodbye.

The world is a turntable that never stops spinning; as humans we merely choose the tracks we want to sit out and the ones that inspire us to dance.

This stuff is complicated. But it’s like I’m some long-division problem folks keep wanting to parcel into pieces, and they don’t hear me when I say: I don’t reduce, homies. The whole of me is Black. The whole of me is whole.

You can’t make too much space for a father like mine in your life. Because he’ll elbow his way in and stretch the corners wide, and when he leaves all you have is the oversized empty—the gap in your heart where a parent should be.

And ain’t that what it means to be a sister? Holding things tight when the other one is falling apart?