Benjamin Alire Sáenz

The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.

So I renamed myself Ari.

If I switched the letter, my name was Air.

I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.

I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.

I liked hearing him laugh. It made things seem normal. A part of me thought things would never be normal again.

“Your smile is back.” That’s what Dante said.

“Smiles are like that. They come and go.”

He was so perfect in his newly organized room, the western sun streaming in, his face in the light and the book in his hand as if it was meant to be there, in his hands, and only in his hands. I liked his voice as he read the poem as if he had written it

Until Dante, being with other people was the hardest thing in the world for me. But Dante made talking and living and feeling seem like all those things were perfectly natural. Not in my world, they weren’t.

That afternoon, I learned two new words. “Inscrutable.” And “friend.”

Words were different when they lived inside of you.

“Someday, I’m going to discover all the secrets of the universe.”

And it seemed to me that Dante’s face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.

Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?

I guess I did miss Dante—even though I tried hard to not think about him. The problem with trying hard not to think about something was that you thought about it even more.

Dante.

For some reason I thought of Ileana.