Clap When You Land

by Elizabeth Acevedo

But I learned young, you do not speak of the dying as if they are already dead.

I could read the Morse code of sweat beads on her forehead.

I’ve always loved that phrase for birthing: dando a luz giving to light. I was my mother’s gift to the sun of her life.

his laugh was like one of those paper shredders making a sad confetti of my hopes.

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

you are dark & always been beautiful: like the night, like a star after it bursts, like obsidian & onyx & jet precious. But I know I am beautiful like all & none of those things: far in the sky & deep in the earth I am beautiful like a dark-skinned girl that is right here.

We both know what it’s like to have our parents look at us like we are dressed in neon question marks.

her laugh is Mount Vesuvius— an eruption that unsettles & shakes me to my core?

We stack our faith up like spinal discs to hold us upright; it gives us language to fill our mouths & hearts & ears.

we know the different kinds of stories our silence can tell.

I am from a playground place. Our oceans that we need for fish are cleared so extranjeros can kite surf. Our land, lush & green, is bought & sold to foreign powers so they can build luxury hotels for others to rest their heads. The bananas & yucca & sugarcane farmed & harvested, exported, while kids thank God for every little scrap. The developed world wastes gas, raises carbon emissions & water levels that threaten to disappear us in a single gulp. Even the women, girls like me, our mothers & tías, our bodies are branded jungle gyms. Men with accents pick us as if from a brochure to climb & slide & swing.

Maybe anger is like a river, maybe it crumbles everything around it, maybe it hides so many skeletons beneath the rolling surface.

Is this what sisterhood is? A negotiation of the things you make possible out of impossible requests?

Such a funny phrase, pay respects. As if suffering is a debt that can be eased by a hug & a head nod.