Sueñito [Vasco/Kass]

Vasco Izar

Who's gonna throw the very first stone?

Oh! Who's gonna reset the bone?

Walking with your head in a sling

Wanna hear the soldier sing

When have you ever fallen apart?

Not when they whipped us for speaking our language. My brothers and I, children, working the fields and singing boleros, threats to no one but our words, our language too different to ever be a part of this panem. At best there was an irritated indifference, at worst – a baton to the shoulder, and stitches, for something that had always been a part of me.

We didn’t stop speaking these words, not when they were a part of us. When we could point to a history and say these colors, red, green, white, that’s who I am. Come and take them away from us, come and try! We’d never be set back, no matter that our land was at the edge of the district, or the soil was littered with old stumps and acidic. It was ours, a whole space that lent to freedom more than loneliness. A place where we could celebrate our dead, where the stars came to guide us.

Not when Benat’s name was pulled, and we rallied to Bakar’s house. When we wore black at his death, sang sweet hymns for a boy whose only sin had been abundance of life. Or when they took Iago, or Levi, when they ripped up the saplings by their roots, tearing out pieces of us as though we were weeds blotting out the land. When Salome came so close to coming back to us, we let our hearts get out in front of our heads.

But you can’t go on fighting forever.

Can’t keep looking out at the horizon thinking, the sun will rise again today without thinking – well maybe, just this once. Maybe once you couldn’t rise, you could stay back and leave us in darkness. When the pain takes a piece of you and there’s a crack, wedged deep down into your heart, turning you cold. Making you heavier than you ever imagined you could be. Feet of lead and heart of stone, you walk the earth just hoping, please don’t let the sun rise today.

I wish could say I didn’t after Raquel died. That I was some sort of perfect person, that I wasn’t short with my wife or hard on Emmanuel and Sofia. That I didn’t yell at Sofia for dirtying her dress before Raquel’s funeral. Or that I didn’t tell Emmanuel he needed to be more of a man and pull his weight; that the world wouldn’t revolve around him so he needed to stop sulking.

Family beats it all into retreat. Friends that show us the sun still rises. That we're not alone, only if that's what we choose to be.

That darkness doesn’t become a part of us, if we let it.

It comes and goes. When the world is too quiet, when I feel as though lately nothing I ever do will be good enough. It'll always be a part of you, waiting under the surface, even if it's too deep to see at first glance.

As the sun comes up on the horizon, you still feel the weight. And it’s not that you don’t want to push back against it, to scream that you’re doing your god damned best. But you’re underwater then. Anything you scream is caught in your throat, burning through your lungs. You have to keep kicking, keep pushing so as just not to drown.

Not when you have a wife, and children. Nieces and nephews who look at you and see a man that’s always tried to give them just a piece of happiness. Who tells them that kindness is the point, no matter how hard it becomes.

I thought I could do so much good for all of them, you know? I thought I could show the rest of the district that I loved them, fought for them, was willing to die for them. That if I could just let them taste an ounce of kindness, the same kindness that saved my own life, I’d have done my best. It’s all I wanted.

But it’s too hard now.

They’ve taken Alfonso and Sarina, and I’m still here, sitting at a fancy wooden desk, in an office surrounded by their memories. Photos of a few summers ago, where all the children had been forced together to show that we were as prolific as we were prodigious. Do you see how Emmanuel smiles? As if it’s okay now, this moment, even after all the pain, that he knows the love of his cousins. Of all of us. Emma’s knitted scarf, the same I’d worn traipsing the district during the election. A piece of quartz left behind by Yani.

I tell myself it’s okay to be sad, that I could weep and it wouldn’t make me any less a person. And I want to believe that, even as I choke and bite into my fist so as to hold back the next wave of tears, that no one would hold it against me. But that’s not the world that we live in, not here. Not when the mayor was supposed to fight for his people. When I was supposed to protect them from this. My family.

God –

I wish I could say that I knew what I was supposed to do.

I wipe the tears from my eyes, all red and puffy. At the ready to cry again when there’s a knock at the door.

“Venga,” I call out, voice hoarse.

And I almost hope: maybe they’ve come to take me, too.

Intervention, Arcade Fire