Their beautiful skin is the color of perfection, the shade of impeccably cooked lechón.

Stars, trees, lasers, lights, everything locking into nothing, everything together yet apart.

Because the summer feels more hellfire than hellfire.

What if the world was stuck, frozen, and we could go anywhere we wanted, together?

A few steps are all that separate us.

We—our family—had so little to give each other; maybe we needed to look elsewhere.

It’s always only Rio standing there.

For it is what Grandma made best, and it is what we knew and ate.

You know what I am trying to do for you, Night, she says. I am trying to make life easier.

As I inhaled the sharpness I thought about how much I loved her, and I thought about all the things I would do to prove it.

Maybe you should’ve said something sooner, Robert.

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I had vowed to be different, but I wasn’t able to escape servitude, even eight thousand miles away in New York.

You’re brought up by blue, Father said.

I wonder how the body knows it’s ready to feed another life. Does it even get a choice to be ready?

We heard a glass break, then saw our mother, saw what looked like tears.

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I close my eyes once again and let my hands remember the beat.

Looking is not enough. You must run this beauty between finger and thumb.

Wei forgot that he’d given up these aspirations, but he knew they were still possible for her.