Distance Under the Same Sun
I have worn distance like a winter coat, heavy against my skin, since I left Buenos Aires weeks after my sixth birthday. I don’t remember much from those days, but my mom tells stories: of my deafening sobs during long drives, the shyness paralyzing the vibrance that once kept my heart beating, our fights over my math homework written in English (neither of us could understand.)
I wore the coat wrapped tightly around me through Miami summers; those summers when the sun radiated so bright that my skin tanned through the thick fabric of distance, sunscreen, and sweat.
Every summer seemed to melt some of the distance off my skin: I learned to speak English, tried an arepa for the first time, swallowed too much of the ocean’s salt. I was happy.
Justo cuando estaba convencida de que te había inventado (just when I was convinced that I had made you up)
Halfway through my 13th year, my family moved to Bogotá. This time distance set herself comfortably between the boundaries outlined by my shadow. This time when I cried I did not know whether to direct my tears towards the northern or southern horizon. I did not celebrate my quinceñera, knowing wherever I did, people close to me would be missing.
Soon, as my feet began to leave permanent prints in the rich Colombian soil, I realized Bogotá was the ideal middle ground. We were lucky to visit both my homes often as we found our place in a new city. By the end of my time there two and a half years later, I found comfort in seeing my shadow — created by the same sun that coached me through my first move, standing tall against the Andes range, and extending all the way to its final peak in Argentina. I had come full circle, and that life we had built in the clouds was just as mine as the ones we had left behind throughout the years. All under the same sun.
Con un suspiro del viento
Apareciste (you appeared with the wind's sigh)
In January of 2015, it seemed my body soaked up the remnants of distance from my shadow. Distance traveled from my toes, crawled up my legs, into the pit of my stomach, and finally settled in my chest, where she grew comfortably. My return to Miami was met with hazy eyes and tingling limbs. That weight in my chest made it impossible for me to focus on anything but the fact that my presence had somehow outgrown the empty space it left behind three years before.
It is strange to return to a place with expectations assembled by the residue of the past, only to realize that everything has changed. I missed my family, I missed the friends I had just left behind, and I missed my memory of the place I had returned to.
I decided I would not be held captive by what would have been. The sun was still the same. And soon I was home again.
Me desangré de tristezas
Y por fin descubrí la paz (I bled out my sorrows and finally discovered peace)
Then I met death. Or, rather, her threatening gaze. My mom was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer a year and a half ago. And in the time since I have also met fear. Real fear. The type that forces your mind into a loop in a dehumanizing way. The type that pushes everyone away.
Death was grasping for half of my identity as fear came for my entire soul. Because what would become of me if I couldn’t walk through life without her hand in mine? How would I remember how to take a step forward?
And to this day, the fear that our last encounter will be my final memory of her haunts me. It clutches the back of my mind and digs its nails whenever I am alone. I don’t want to be alone. Distanced.
The words that defined her fate struggled to float lightly from her lips. June’s humidity weighed them down. They cast a sharp shadow on my sun-stroked forehead. She took my hand and reminded me that that moment was more important than what might be. And now, over a year later, she’s still beside me. Now the word ‘terminal’ has another meaning. It means someday. I don’t know how that makes me feel but it means that we’re here now.
A pesar de que tarareabas incertidumbres
Desde la otra punta del cuarto (even though you hummed uncertainties from the opposite corner of the room)
And then, in 2020, the world stopped. The days melted into weeks. I do not need to explain distance here. This distance is one that, no matter who you are, we share.
A pesar de que mostrabas tu tendencia a tropezarte
A traves de los hilos de sangre que decoraban tus rodillas (even though you showed your tendency to trip through the threads of blood that decorated your knees)
Today was the first time I hugged my mom since the pandemic began. Our distance pushed shut by the growth of our distance from our family. Death showed her power, this time in action, as she delicately told my cousin Carolina's soul that it was time to go.
What combination of words could ever transmit what an embrace would?
I do not know. We had to settle for a phone call muted by grief, tears dripping down the telephone line. And how could the sky be so clear, how could the sun shine so bright, on such a dark afternoon? It seemed insensitive of the universe not to grieve with us.
Never had I felt distance so close, so embedded into my self, as I did today.
A pesar de que calentabas equivocaciones entre tus manos
Sobre el fuego que nacía entre tus pies (even though you warmed mistakes between your hands over the fire that formed between your feet)
The sun's journey is cyclical just like mine.
And if distance, in all her forms, has taught me anything, it is that love, unity, and empathy have a reach that extends beyond any emptiness loneliness can instigate. I have been lucky to travel the distance that I have, under the circumstances that I have, slowly adding people from all over as integral pieces of my heart. Home is now in their hands – as expansive as the sun’s reach. Home is now within me.
Apareciste
Y me llamaste con las manos
Y me llené de paz (You appeared and you called me over with your hands and I was filled with peace)
*This piece was originally written for HU’s first volume: Highs & Lows in December of 2020