Arrivals
Anaïs Deal-Márquez
When I throw up the candied coconut mixed in salt water, I feel empty. Jujú holds my hand, and I tell her next year we’ll return to the ocean. Truth feels different in the skin of a child. I think that if I say it enough, the waves will pull me back to the heaving music of the tide. Ocean waves feel like body armor, like I can charge into battle with them.Years later, this last birthday off the coast would become memories of tortillerías, sugared tamarindo on the side of the highway near the beach,and the musty smell of wet earth before the rain comes. I remember every detail of the day. How I stubbed my toe in the morning and was bitten by a crab in the afternoon. People on the beach that day have become living, breathing photographs in my mind. Wind-blown hair flying in people’s eyes, my name etched on the dunes, cousins become mermaids on the sand, my dad— full beard just barely graying—smiles with a Dos Equis in his hand and gestures wildly with the other, mid-joke.