Tag: reflection
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Walking in the Rain
Walking in the RainI don’t know why rain breaks my heart.No one I loved ever died on a rainy day.In my life, it has become an elegy to sunshine.Maybe, it’s because rain feels like tears.I go outside when it reduces to a soft drizzle,just before the scent of petrichor has settled into the earth,my dog…
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Aftermath
Aftermath The crash happens, and then everything waits. The tow truck arrives—sleek and gleaming, its midnight-black paint absorbing the streetlights in a perfect, polished hush. It is not a wrecker—it is a machine with purpose, its curved chassis hugging the ground like a race car— the quiet arrogance of a predator. The hydraulic arm unfolds…
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The Nacre of Survival
**The Nacre of Survival** After all the operations, after the slow unraveling, I trace the shimmer left behind, a pearl forming in the absence of what was— the weight of my steps lighter, not in grace, but in uncertainty mixed with hope. I do not run anymore Yet, I watch Tom Cruise sprint, sprint— limbs…
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My Jesus Hour in a Taco Bell
I feel at home at Taco Bell, as the cuisine echoes the worst of my mom’s cooking: cheese that tastes like beans, beans that taste like rice, rice that tastes like flour.It’s where I go when I am missing someone, usually near their Jesus’ hour, between the last sip of a lunch hour Pepsi and…
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Abundant Mangoes
This is the first time I’ve been in this mango grove, hearing the iguaca sing, since my parents left this islandIt is mid-July and I am wearing my dad’s old hat palm pava square and jaunty on my balding crownquietly stealing this fleshy passion fruit, its skin warm on my palm, eager to be sucked,…
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Rogue Brother
My brother is an angler devoted to the stream that pools around long boots, making the slow cast that gently whips and ripples the surface with a reel that knows the proper weight of the scales below.Gone are the days when he fished Crandon Pier while sitting on an overturned paint bucket with a cheap…
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A Son’s Lament
It’s been over thirty-five years since I felt your motherly touch, and I no longer try to shape a garden of sorrow. Instead, I let the new grass flame, its green distinct from the old cold fire, whose embers tighten their ring with each passing year. I find joy in the crepe myrtles unfolding into…
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Trying on My Dad’s Wingtips
I tried on several of my father’s old Brooks Brother suitsjust before his funeral, trying to save myself the expense of an outfit I didn’t need. Each was too tight on the collars. too short on the sleeves, each crotch inseam strangled my manhood.I had outgrown them all.Almost all of it will go to Goodwill-except…
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Mirrors of Her Self
It’s the exact opposite of herself she sees,the cast away light she can’t cast away.the ugly reality that lives in her unrealitya reverse Narcissus drowning in her reflection.The things she hates are all there- and also all the things she loves.All she has to do is look awayand it will vanish from her sight.Yet, she…