Between the Waves
There was never a single border,
only the shifting tide of language,
guavas glowing in the heat,
the churn of Spanglish rolling in
before the tide could pull it back.
At the checkout line, the cashier asks,
"Paper or plastic?"—so simple, so sharp.
I glance at Mama, but her words stick,
caught between lips and hesitation.
I answer for us. The shame clings,
her silence louder than any mistake.
Each summer, my abuela arrived
with stories curled like conch shells,
her voice full of salt and lineage,
each word a bridge we crossed halfway,
somewhere between knowing and forgetting.
She tells me of the women before us,
how her mother boiled guava leaves
to ease the aches of growing bones,
how a girl’s silence could mean strength
but never surrender. “You carry oceans,”
she says, pressing a shell into my palm.
"Listen, and you will always know
where you come from."
In the humid dusk, I traced my name
in sidewalk chalk, watched rain
blur it into something new.
Could memory be pliant? Could belonging
be washed and reshaped by the wind?
But what of the body—
its slow turning, the way girlhood folds
like an old dress, pressed into something new?
What of the hands that will cradle, will teach,
will shape another name into the world?
I watch my mother’s weary eyes,
the way she smooths the hem of her days,
thumb and forefinger pressing the fabric,
flattening something unseen.
I wonder if I will smooth my own worry
the way she does—without pause,
without breaking.
Outside, the cicadas rasp,
their voices a low and constant hum,
a pulse threading through the thick heat
like something old, something knowing.
Here, the neon hum of the city never rests,
palm fronds shudder against the skyline,
the edge between past and present dissolving,
Miami swallowing whole every homecoming,
every goodbye never quite gone.
At the bodega, my friends are waiting,
laughing too loud, pressing tamarind candy
into my palm, the sticky sweetness clinging—
a small amber stone, a promise of what remains.
We swap bracelets—plastic beads clinking—
a quiet oath in neon-lit safety.
But between jokes, between
sips of cola and smudged lip gloss,
I catch glimpses—mothers’ tired hands,
names that slip too easily from memory,
the weight of futures we pretend not to see,
just for now, just for tonight.
Still, the tamarind sticks,
a sharpness beneath its sweetness,
as if warning—this is not just candy,
but proof of change, proof that
what is soft can still pull,
what is sweet can still sting.
As I walk home, salt on my lips,
the moon folds itself into the bay,
the water whispering,
"Listen, listen,"
until it carries the answer away.
Somewhere, I smooth my sleeve,
flattening the fabric beneath my palm.
