(D: We, of course, made a lot of prank phone calls...we roasted marshmallows on a candle in Jackie Clement's bedroom – until her mom found out...we played Barbies, we rode our bikes everywhere, we played street baseball...)

Bell opens the blue, white tennis shoes, and my red dress
Me, cousin Marikit, her siblings three, y mi cuate
Cross grass and wide streets to the library, to the library
One, two, three

Cave under the red roof
Star bright as a dog tooth
I read all about you
Do you know how to read, too?

Well, that can’t bother me
I have powers of invisibility, and
A map in my memory
Of my school and my house and my cousin’s street and

We’re at the library
Books on tigers and dolphins for Marikit, and
Mi cuate likes mysteries
Roque, Don, and Ana like everything, okay

Bikes sleep on the bright street; chalk drums on our scab knees
Mi cuate trips up homerunning, brow crunch in the gold heat
Later I’ll say, I know you get this way, lose your words to the lurch of your hurting
But I love you the same, but for now, just today, I will take you away with our books in our arms

See this? on Mérida,
Manila, where Marikit’s mama’s from
Sound out each syllanum
Dad asks where you got all the Band-Aids from

And not much bothers me
You watch the moon dance with the shadow-trees
Yucatán yawns in front of me
As I read with a flashlight beneath the sheets
(One, two, three)

(D: We frame it nowadays in terms of, "kids had so much freedom then." And I think that that's true, but I also think that that had something to do with – women were home and were mothers 24/7, and they just didn't need you in their face. They just wanted you out of the house. And I don't know if it was any safer back then, but it wasn't considered freedom at that time. I think part of it was just, like, the way that we viewed children back then. You weren't thinking about their emotional health and how to make sure they feel included in whatever games they're playing with their friends. There was not a lot of intervention in the life of children. We didn't really see children as, like, little humans with emotional lives. It was more, "they're these other things.")