Strings
Abuela used to sigh so deep you could hear it from the other room.
I wondered if it was the weight of a lifetime of goodbyes.
Years later, sitting in the quiet predawn darkness of my newborn daughter’s room, she sighed like abuela—only it was an exhale filled with the burden of all she had yet to learn.
I was in the middle somewhere between the two of them connecting one to the other through space and time.
We are, all of us, living legacies, sighs bearing joy and pain and all the histories that shape us.
I knew my daughter before I met her.
I knew her as a hand holding mine in its final goodbye that echoed through the tiny hand wrapped around my finger saying its first hello.
