The fetid Midwestern heat is trapped in this house with you…

Through the small oval window in the attic, you look out onto the verdant garden…

Even from a distance, as Zora parks their car among the maze of vehicles in the field, Xochitl can see the carnival lights…

I see her through the window coming up the sidewalk and I know it’s mija.

One November Sunday in 1997, when she’s thirteen, she and her mother go on a grocery trip.

The father and son came as others had, after the sky had shed its neon ribbons…