Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling over Mexico City but no one even noticed. The air carried poison through the streets and open windows. You’d just finished eating and were watching cartoons on TV. I was reading in the bedroom next door when I realized we were going to die. Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself to the kitchen and found you on the floor. We hugged. You asked what was happening and I didn’t tell you we were on death’s program but instead that we were going on a journey, one more, together, and that you shouldn’t be afraid. When it left, death didn’t even close our eyes. What are we? you asked a week or year later, Ants, bees, wrong numbers in the big rotten soup of chance? We’re human beings, my son, almost birds, public heroes and secrets.

(Translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy)