No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. It's Just One Planet. But There Are Many Stories.
In the months after her little brother came to New York City, Rosa met many of his girlfriends. One or two were fellow Peruvians, but most were Puerto Ricans. This was because from the moment that her brother landed in New York, he fell for the music of Puerto Rico - salsa - harder than he ever did for any woman. Emilina was the last and the sweetest of his girlfriends.
I work at the kitchen table, which feels more conducive to messes than an office desk. From the marble notebook, I type the story into my laptop, cleaning up the draft as I go, expanding or cutting.
I’m not sure where to start today.
“True freedom can be lonely…but it’s also sweet.”
The brass bell above the letter box rang for the first time today. Arati had installed it a week ago. She ran out to meet the postman, but caught only a glimpse of his khaki-clad back, as he peddled away furiously on his bottle-green bicycle with rusty fenders. Her heart raced as she unlatched the wooden letter box. She broke into a smile seeing the postcard—pale-yellow in colour, fourteen-by-nine centimetres in size (she knew this by heart), one of the four corners curling up slightly. It had been four months since she last received one of these. Bapa’s handwriting had become squigglier, but it was still legible.
I lie in bed waiting: sometimes to fall asleep, sometimes to get up and start writing again. I let it out. It meanders and finds its path. It has a mind of its own. I can’t arrest it again. It flows. Sometimes it refuses to go further; then it decides to go deeper, like a whirlpool. Motion has many forms. I let it dig, find the trenches, fill it up and move forward again.