In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

Perhaps this is the only way to grieve the big things—in snippets, pinches, little sips of sadness.

That room was silent with the fury of avenging angels sharpening their radiance before they strike.

“Dictatorships,” he was saying, “are pantheistic. The dictator manages to plant a little piece of himself in every one of us.”