“Basmah” means “smile” in Arabic. That’s what my ex-wife named our daughter; she said that maybe she could teach me how to smile. Our marriage lasted for eight years. I tried my best.

We assume that we would die inside of any black hole but what if we sometimes survive and what would we find there in the survival abyss

Sound travels differently in a barrio. Here, there are no quiet hours, no inconvenience; without noise, the air stifles.

Oh, that’s where my parents used to—Grandma cuts off her sentence, spins around and starts again, climbing the stairs towards us. “That’s where my parents put me during storms.”

There were rules to keep him safe, then, and rules enough for now

I am kin to the disobedient woman precisely because I am not a woman, because no one is correctly a woman, because everyone fears being a woman, because the woman striving to be a paragon will die by a thousand dull cuts.