Clap When You Land

by Elizabeth Acevedo

I will make it. I will make it. I will make it easier for us both.

Swimming might be the closest to flying a human being can get.

& if a heart has topography, I know none of these boys know the coordinates to navigate & survive mine’s rough terrain.

a woman should be able to sell whatever she wants to sell. But not if it’s at the insistence of a man.

“Never, ever, let them see you sweat, negra. Fight until you can’t breathe, & if you have to forfeit, you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win.”

It’s just the rest of him took up a whole room & it was hard to notice he had anything missing at all except when he was the one missing, & then it was like days were deflated, like when his flight rose into the sky he took all the air on earth with him.

You can’t run from what hurts you, or like a dog smelling fear, that grief will just keep chasing with ever-sharp teeth.”

Who knew death must be so damn polite?

I am my father’s daughter, a bad daughter, a bad daughter to a great woman.

If tension is a winged monster, it’s cast its feathers on the roof of my house.

I’m the child her father left her for in the summers. While she is the child my father left me for my entire life.

The patron saint of the ocean is known for containing many parts of herself: she is a nurturer, but she is also a ferocious defender. & so I remember that to walk this world you must be kind but also fierce.

I know a man can have many faces & speak out of both sides of his mouth; I know a man can make decisions based on the flip of a coin; a man can be real good at long division, give away piece after piece after piece of himself.

I have my fingerprints all over you. & I don’t need the world to see them to know that they’re there.”

This must be a plane of Dominicans returning home; when you touch down on this soil, you must clap when you land. Para dar gracias a dios. Regrezamos.”

Tía like a bishop, slashing her long machete. Mami, the knight with rims. My body in front of my sister’s body: queens. Papi, who I know is here too. He did build that castle he always promised.