There was nothing above me except the weight of worlds. Tears frozen beneath my eye, body broken, indistinguishable from the wreckage I lay in. Jupiter’s heavy presence threaded through the maelstrom raging overhead but the planet itself was unseen. Beyond the atmosphere lay Saturn and Mars and Earth, along with the billions who called them home.

Several teeth were broken, rotten with age and the detrimental cocktail of water and air mixed with time and metal. I tentatively ran my finger over them. They didn't feel sharp, but I knew that a few missing teeth would never have stopped it from being used: this saw blade still had plenty of life left.

"Whereabouts did you say you found it again?”

We had a map spread out on the hood of my truck. Blue depicted streams and lakes, little tufts indicated swamp and curvy lines showing how the topography changed.

She exhumed the remains of her childhood beneath the watchful eye of a meadowlark, the prairie grasses bobbed and swayed in a primal ballet around her. Scrabbling beneath the ash tree, hidden in that hollow, empty place, she dug, and cursed herself for not bringing a larger shovel. She should have known that memories are notoriously difficult to unearth, especially the heavy ones which have had to endure blizzards and thunderstorms, scorching sun and relentless wind, with little to shield them from loneliness and decay.

I slip in to watch her last moments of sleep before morning’s rise. Sinking into the chair by the window, I’m caressed by the shadows. We are familiar, these shadows of the past and I.

I watch as she twitches her dream dance. I am as much short and aching as she is all limbs, long and lithe, tangled amongst the blankets. I exhale as she settles, her dream torture forgotten. In this moment, we are both safe, and I can breathe.

One moment he was not there, and then he was, naked in the middle of the street, early on a cold December morning.
He stood so calmly, so still, like nothing at all was wrong. I remember my first instinct was to look away, avoid him, not get involved. But then a car screeched to a halt, and a red face yelled through the window, “Get out of the way, you freak!”
And then there I was, running into the road myself, pulling my long winter coat off.
“Here, put this on,” were my first mumbled words to him as I placed it around his broad shoulders.

Dressed in a tight-fitting black suit, Rosario Cino, flanked by his son Mario and his nephew Charlie, also in black suits, exited the cool of All Souls Church and stepped into a rank wall of unseasonably warm and humid air. They and a handful of friends and relatives had just sat through the funeral of Guido Tutolo, a former bookie, loan shark, and paisan—and last of the old gang, as Rosario had said repeatedly to his son and nephew, neither of whom seemed torn up abut the death, their connection to Guido limited, their youthfulness of course looking forward.

Chaos crept its way into Arthur Burke’s life. The commotion began slowly, much like a long distance runner who knows a sprint is around the bend. It’s exhausting. Sometimes he holds his breath and counts silently in his head. Other days he pounds his fist against his head.

My time with Tat had gone by too fast.

I thought this day would get easier each year. I believed I would either grow numb to the pain or strong enough to bear it. Neither happened. I never imagined that I could feel this way, that I could feel like a real father.

On Thursday morning, prying myself from under the blankets, I peered with tired eyes at the surroundings. Everything looked the same as it was the night before, and the night before that. I could scarcely recall either. Sleep was fleeting, and the pounding of my pulse was too fast and too loud. Unfamiliar lodgings made me yearn for my own bed.

On October 12, 1954, RMS Queen Elizabeth, pride of the Cunard Line, docked at New York City. From the ship’s bridge, press baron Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, sent a telegram to the mayor of his hometown, Newcastle, New Brunswick, to announce his arrival at the end of the week.

Menas Coco, Más Cacao Chocó, Colombia is a land of happiness and hopelessness, of beauty and brutality. And Chocó is my home. I am Ana Marino, only daughter of Jesús Marino, un campesino—a poor farmer—un padre orgulloso—a proud father.

Mona is my self-proclaimed therapist, who I know will take everything I say to her and twist it into being all about her. She’ll continue to talk about it at every family gathering for as long as she lives. We have no secrets between us.

If rules are not followed, bad things will happen. This is what I believe. I would never take the chance that good fortune was a trick of fate and would certainly never do anything illegal, or even slightly immoral. I live life in long-hand hoping I don’t miss the signs that are meant for me. If a deadline is not met, without assistance, coercion or bribery, a golden opportunity is gone, forever.

This is my story.