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December 19, 2021 - January 30, 2022
If my dad could cry, then so can I.
“You have the musical taste of a frat guy named Chad.”
“You can still love someone even after they hurt you.”
When Marimar had asked why everyone in the family carried the last name Montoya, even though it was the maternal last name, Orquídea simply said that she wanted to leave her mark, and besides, she went through all the trouble of giving birth each time.
He had all the heat of a stove burner set to medium.
The world is bad and sometimes good things happen, not the other way around.
“Bro, you can’t just say that grandma is a tree.” “But she is!”
“I couldn’t water a houseplant with the things you know, Greta.”
it was good to know that all families were the same in certain ways. There were those who felt too much, those who felt too little, and others who knew how to deal with those feelings.
“He’s off somewhere being an anthropomorphized bag of dicks,”
He looked at her like she was someone who should not be ignored. He looked at her like he wanted to be consumed by her.
She had one text message from Juan Luis that said, “Sick funeral.”
He didn’t want to be one of those New Yorkers who always wore black, mostly because he wasn’t a New Yorker. He was from Four Rivers, the product of women who were transmutable. First mortal, then divine.
Bolívar had never been kissed this way. Slowly, carefully, as if he were the one who needed the soft touch. Like she had peered into his brittle heart and wanted to have care.
“Speaking of inappropriate segues, what’s for brunch?”
When she’d met Orquídea Montoya, she saw a whisper of a girl who wanted to become a scream.
Then again, she knew better than to try to alter destiny. The way she saw it, they were all fucked either way.
But she should have known. When a man dismisses other women as nothing, he would eventually do the same to her.
You could be born into a family, but you still had to choose them.
“I’ve been struggling with whether to tell you.” “Why?” Rey asked. “We’re millennials. We’re desensitized and have no shame.”
He kissed her cheekbones. Her nose. He kissed her left eye and then her right one. Her mother had always said that when a man kissed your eyes shut, he is lying to you.
She knew she deserved better. The world, like he’d promised.
He didn’t want to hurt her the way an alcoholic didn’t want another drink.
Some people were meant for great, lasting legacies. Others were meant for small moments of goodness, tiny but that rippled and grew in big, wide waves.
Her vow shimmered gold in the thread, for what was stronger than words?
Lies carve out holes until they make one big enough to escape through.
How do you fight a thing that believes it owns you? How do you fight the past? With gold leaves and salt? With silence? With new earth beneath your feet? With the bodies, the hearts of others? With hearts that are tender and bloodied but have thorns of their own. With the family that chooses you.
She thought of the things she was made of—flesh and bone, thorns and salt, bruises and promises, the sigh of the universe.
