The Promise

I want to be poor, Mama,” she would say to her mother.
But what was poverty? Poverty for her was to be free, to go barefoot, to not be operated on, to climb trees, to eat unripe fruit, to play in the mud and with fire, to not have a nanny or knitted gloves on her hands. Her mother replied:
“You don’t know what it means to be poor.”

To see her as more beautiful, I would always look at her in any mirror there was in a room, if there was one, or reflected in the glass of windowpanes or paintings, and never directly

The heat of her hands wilted everything they touched

Remigio Luna, a mischievous but precocious child, would talk to me at the seashore like a grown man.

A young man touched my breasts as he passed me. “Mermaid, go back to the sea,” was the only thing I understood. This brought about an orgasm that I never want to repeat

Women love with their eyes closed, men with their eyes open,

What bad luck it is for those in love who fall in love with a false image!

As soon as I heard his voice, I was lost

The only advantage of being a child is that time is doubly wide, like upholstery fabric

Hunger distracts one from all other appetites