Furia

by Yamile Saied Méndez

Lies have short legs. I learned this proverb before I could speak.

The part of me that had been set free during the game stretched her wings and howled at the sun.

Fútbol could do that—make people forget about the price of the dollar, the upcoming elections, even their love lives. For a few hours, life was beautiful.

I’d leave this house the first chance I got, but not by chasing after a boy, including my brother. I’d do it on my own terms, following my own dreams, not someone else’s. And most importantly, no one would leech off my sacrifices. No one.

People could fight over handkerchief colors until the sun bleached them all to the same shade of gray, and in the meantime, girls would continue to die.

“I loved the bit about leaving a part of ourselves in every book we read. How we collect the fragmented souls of those who found the story first. That’s beautiful.”

Mama is such a complicated word. It’s what we call our mothers. What we call a friend, a cute little girl that plays in the park. What a man calls his woman.

When boys and men became angry, they tried to fix the world by breaking it down with their fists.

Our family was stuck in a cosmic hamster wheel of toxic love, making the same mistakes, saying the same words, being hurt in the same ways generation after generation. I didn’t want to keep playing a role in this tragedy of errors.

I smiled and ran to the field to sing the wordless song of the captive women who roared in my blood. My ancestresses had been waiting to sing for generations. I was their medium.

One day, when a girl was born in Rosario, the earth would shake with anticipation for her future and not dread.