More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
What part of a person’s body is inextricably themselves?
I had no name for it in Spanish and this made the tree seem even more otherworldly, because for things to become real, I must be able to name them in Spanish.
how cruel, really—it would have been if my son was reincarnated as something so ephemeral, frail, and beautiful.
He asked me to cry with him, but his sadness was his and I couldn’t steal it.
“No, mi niña. That’s not Santiago. Santiago is dead.” Jackie’s voice was calm, her aura of hair springy. “What you have there is something else.”
Some people clapped as I lifted him back into my arms, alive, as if I had performed some miracle. This was no miracle; there was no luck, no divinity. This was Santiago and me biting, jaws clenched, sucking life.
Santiago’s death didn’t fit my life though I had known it was inevitable. It stopped my life as I’d built it.
“I know you think you’re alone. That your grief is only your own, that it is unfathomable to anyone but yourself. But you’re wrong, Magos.”
I hated the lung for teaching him such self-restraint.
I believed she thought of Lena as the one person who deserved me. The one person, perhaps, who I wouldn’t ever swallow whole.
I wanted my grief, but instead I was left with a horrible nothingness,
wished Carmina was home and someone bathed her like she had bathed me, waiting for her with an open towel in which she nestled and went to sleep, safe and happy.
Wouldn’t that have been a groundbreaking discovery, someone bringing a creature to life solely with their own grief and a prodigious unwillingness to let go?
But mostly I was jealous of the way Magos cared for it despite it being a monster.
Maybe it’s okay that we taste bitter to each other.”
Monstrilio is wild. If you loved him, you wouldn’t want to change him.”
M found out he enjoyed art. Art had no answer, he said, and no right way to be.
“Did you tell him? The Monstrilio part?” I shook my head. “He wouldn’t understand.” “Do you?” His eyes glimmered, and I saw Monstrilio staring back at me, wild and confused. His question was not an accusation but rather a plea.
IT’S LIKE A TRICK, the way I unhinge my jaw and stretch my lips all the way to my earlobes.
I pretend my time as Monstrilio is hazy. Muffled sounds and blurred colors. I say I remember warmth. But I don’t say I miss my fur. I don’t say I’m hungry because my hunger is what makes everyone scared. They are happy to believe I forgot how they maimed me.
