sonora

Like hunting for a dead beloved's face among the living, in places, we find the place we loved before.

We would survive even ourselves, as long as we were together.

There is no moon. The stars have risen and fallen and given way to a new spread, to the smeared heart of our Milky Way.

I don't think I'm from this galaxy at all. I believe I came from the Andromeda galaxy, not so far, but far enough. Maybe that's why I'm an outcast.' He drew the spiral of Andromeda close to the Milky Way, almost touching. Then he pointed to Andromeda in the night sky above us.'Maybe that's where I'm from too,' my father said. We could still see the stars.

You and I, your mother, Ahlam, we are from up there,' my father continued. 'We come from the stunning stars. We were just born in the wrong place. We were meant to live on another planet. The people who come to the desert are those who know this, deep inside of them, we are from up there. From far, far away.

This is it. This is how I always saw heaven, always by the sea, always by night, always in the dark.

I saw Sonora before me, so otherworldly, so desolate, some cast-out mistress on the pale blue planet, and longed suddenly to stay.

For those I come from, there is nothing more devouring than the feeling of want for home, the feeling of need for home. We are all waiting for a form of transport, a ship, a saucer to carry us out of the too-dark night.

Look at the lonely fisherman,' my father says.'Look at his view,' my mother says.

My father insisted I eat red meat. 'You'll lose your brain without food,' he said. A meal to him without beef was starvation.

New York was always so beautiful in the very crux of parting with it.

Her father kneels and unclasps the urn. Above the waves she falls graceful as snow, my sister, my Sonora.