kitchen sink

It’s gonna rain. The sky’s slowly filling in with rolling navy like fire burning across a letter. I soak up as much sun as I can, boots forgotten on the porch and grass twisting to hug up to my ankles, shirt unbuttoned to let as much warmth see my heart as possible. I’ve always loved the sun in my eyes. Abuela used to stick a hat on me whenever she’d catch me with my head tilted like a hungry baby bird, telling me I’d burn my eyes out. 

Papa would tell me and Paulo different myths from all over the world that he’d learned in a college class of his as bedtime stories, hands everywhere and eyes sparkling, speaking with the strength of someone who’d been there in the action, whispers one moment, joyous shouting the next. Abuela said he was like a can of soda and would scold us for shaking him up and making him so loud late at night, but she never could talk about him without a bit of a smile. 

The story of Icarus was my favourite. Course, I didn’t know til I was grown that he had warped the original story from unrolling and rerolling it so much in his mind. I liked his version much better—Icarus and his father are saved from drowning in the ocean by the moon, who apologizes for the sun’s intensity, saying he can be a little too rambunctious for some folks. I love that word, rambunctious. I always hear it in Papa’s voice. I can picture Mama giving the moon’s speech at parties while casting a glance across the room at my father hooking his arm around a friend’s shoulders and laughing as open as a spring magnolia, with that same smile on her face that Abuela gets. 

The rain hits the tree and its blooms first, passing drops hand to hand like a family dinner before sending them down to me, the sugar of the flowers sharpened by the damp. I’ve never seen the ocean outside of movies. Paulo gripped tight to my arm the whole way through Titanic. I don’t remember much of it, probably because I was bored—maybe because I kept getting distracted by the blue glow from Papa’s phone that he was dutifully trying to shield as he pointed it down onto Mama’s crossword, and how Mama would take every opportunity to ask him for un beso de buena suerte before continuing to scribble her answers in. 

My first real crush felt like staring at the sun. She was brighter than anything and warmed my face whenever I looked at her, the centerpiece of my whole day, but I couldn’t bear to look for too long or I’d get a headache. Her image trailed across my vision behind her like her long black hair did whenever she flew out of sight, and Mama kept asking me if I was doing puzzles in my head because of how I would crease my brow and frown trying to keep the sun in the front of my mind, the outline of her nose, the curve of her lips.

My hair and clothes are heavy against my skin, a haze of fog rising in the distance to kiss the rain as it shoots downward into the fields across the street. I laugh as drips collect on my eyelashes. On my first date I’d shown up to his house with black teartracks down my face from when I’d wiped out on my bike on the way over. That was the last time I wore mascara. I rub my hands across my skull, shaking like a dog, overjoyed by the feeling of my hair standing on end in wet spikes. My second date left me at the ice cream shop when I made a joke about me having no boobs—she was embarrassed, and apologized over and over for thinking I was a boy. When I told her she didn’t have to, she scowled at me and left me to pay for both our ice cream cones. Me and Paulo had matching haircuts then.

I stamp my bare feet against the ground, leaving my footprint in the soft mud. There’s a ceramic photograph of my foot impressed into a slab of clay from when I was a baby in Abuela’s room. For so long, I thought in dirt and water, dirt and water, dirt and water. Ground and sky always separate, the big invisible hands of the law pushing the dirt into the ground and pulling the clouds up into the sky, separate, opposite.  I throw my arms out to my sides and imagine shrugging on a huge pair of wings, heavy like one of Papa’s old jackets. I jump, and for a second I’m weightless, stretching my feathers out to the sun, and then I’m falling with the rain, splashing a halo of mud all around me when I return to the Earth.

Ground and sky can touch each other with the rain. Dirt and water can be mud. Nature is not so easily kept apart. I thought once about naming myself Icarus, but I feel love in every mention of the name my parents gave me, so I’m holding onto it for now. I close my eyes, and even drenched in the rain I can feel the warmth of Mama’s hands on my neck and forehead as she helped me shave my head, telling me how she used to do it for Papa, elbowing him in the ribs when he asked if he could return the favour from over her shoulder. In my head, my parents live in the same thought, side by side or touching or kissing. I hope one day I can fall in love with someone who makes my love for everyone else stronger the way I see it in each of their eyes when they look at me. 

My aunties argue over which of my parents I look more like now, and Paulo laughs whenever they ask me when I’m going to get married and have babies, and I laugh with him. I dream sometimes of what my kids might look like, of what they might call me, of who I might dance with in the kitchen in the evenings when they’re asleep, but I wake up content with not having answers about who I want to be or be with—I know that my family will love me when I come inside covered in mud, and so for now, I will enjoy the rain.