Our Share of Night

by Mariana Enriquez

Argentina were the champions and it felt like flying, as if nothing else existed but that moment, a moment that was forever and joyful and so sad because it couldn’t last. They had to go outside, no one could stay in. The streets were full of honking horns and curly-haired dolls wearing number 10 jerseys and flags and confetti. People were chanting, Mire mire qué locura, mire mire qué emoción, and what madness, what excitement, some neighbors brought their phones outside so family members living in other countries could hear the shouts, the drunkenness, and could cry from there, from Canada and the United States and Brazil and Mexico and Spain and France, exiled by dictatorship, working far away because there was never any work in Argentina, and some had watched the game in bars, others had listened on the radio, they all wanted to come back and be there, even in those provinces where it was raining and people were celebrating drenched, their jerseys stuck to their skin. In the park people brought speakers outside and there was dancing and grilled chorizos and wine, the empanada shop cooked for the people and everyone ended up lying in the grass come nightfall, having cried and eaten their fill and shouted themselves hoarse, dressed in blue-and-white from head to toe. Gaspar would remember that day, and that night, as the last happy ones in many, too many years.