I was ten years old when I read about the boy

whose mother drowned in the ocean.

It was in the Scholastic News—

the aluminum boat leaving Cuba,

the shipwreck, the 10 more dead with her,

the boy floating on an inner tube until rescued by fishermen.

His face was on the front page of the magazine

and I wanted to kiss his paper cheek. His name

is Elián and today he turns 23.

My mother shows me a picture

of his mother. She is beautiful in the way

all mothers were in the 90s—

all bangs, high-waisted jersey shorts.

And I don’t know what it is to lose a mother

yet. I won’t see her scoop water from a sinking boat.

My mother came here

on a plane and I thank a god. A different

island, a different year, a baby girl,

not me, in her arms.

Elián went back to Cuba.

And I have never visited the island I’m from.

And I feel like a bitch.

Because all I did was read a story

Then retell it on this page.