Letter to the girls in the same building
i was seven the day they knocked —
“can we play with the spanish girls?”
yaphia and tarita,
smiling like the sun outside our door.
mama laughed,
said “spanish girls?”
because yaphia’s father was puerto rican too.
and that was the start -
the start of everything.
we held each other like secrets -
first periods, first kisses, first heartbreaks,
all the firsts we whispered into the walls.
we cut class, we laughed, we cried,
we failed, we succeeded,
we survived.
there were things no one said out loud -
but we carried them all the same,
in glances, in silence,
in the way Fire looked when no one was watching,
in the way Tarita’s smile flickered just before the storm.
we’re mothers now,
with children and husbands and lives that pull us apart,
but when we meet -
time folds.
no distance, no years,
just the same three girls
with the same unspoken pact.
whatever secret needs telling,
we tell.
whatever joy needs celebrating,
we celebrate.
no questions asked.
no judgment given.
we are more than what tried to break us.
we are the mothers, the sisters, the keepers of light
who never forgot how to hold each other.
we carry each other still -
in laughter, in tears, in the spaces between.
and i love you, girls,
more than words in this letter can hold.
thank you for being my safe place -
then, now, always.
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