“Unlocking the Secrets of ‘Streams’: Marcos Reyna’s Journey Through Time and Memory”
III. Chihuahua, 1983
They say we’re seventy percent water. Maybe that’s why we gravitate towards it. Maybe it calls to us, and we hear its voice because we have its nature within. I can’t be certain. What I do know is that memory begins in a swimming pool in Mexico with my dad. I was too young to know what death was.
He woke early and carried me down from our hotel room to the pool and placed me in a plastic raft. I bobbed as he swam laps. Gentle ripples, rising sun, long shadows. Then a guttural scream. Footsteps on the patio. People gathered on balconies covering their mouths while Dad floated face down. Men rescued his body and Mom ran down from the room and pumped at his chest, pressing her lips into his. I’d never seen them kiss that way before. Men in white uniforms covered him with a sheet and slid him into an ambulance. It drove away—sirenless.
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