This was an amazing debut story!! Xiomara is all more common I'm sure than we know! She grows up in Harlem with a DEVOUT Catholic mother, who is determined for her to not "make her mistakes". But Xio, wants to be heard and pours her words onto the pages of her journal, she understands that those words are best kept to herself, until Xiomara refuses to be silent!
My FAVORITE closing of a book every!!
" I was raised in a home of prayers and silence and although Jesus preaches love, I didn't always feel loved. The weird thing about the Bible is that almost everything in it is a metaphor. So it seems to me that when the Bible describes the church as a place where two or more people discuss God, they don't mean just the cathedral-like churches. I don't know what, who, or where God is. But if everything is a metaphor, I think he or she is a comparison to us. I think we are all like or as God.
I think when we get together and talk about ourselves, about being human, about what hurts us, we're also talking about God. So that's also church, right? (I know this might seem blasphemous, but my priest tells me it's Okay to ask questions...even if they seem bizarre. ) And so, I love this quote because even though it's not about poetry. It IS about poetry. It's about any words that bring us together and how we can form a home in them. I don't know if I'll ever be as religious as my mother, as devout as my brother and best friend, I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn't that what a poem is? A later glowing in the dark. " 5