Manicomio by Nicole Vasquez

Manicomio by Nicole Vasquez

Manicomio by Nicole Vasquez

In the summer of your birth, a huracan ripped through the Antilles and into the heart of the island; hungry hurricane fingers tearing open the island’s soft flesh, boring into the wet earth to claw at it’s roots, upturning centuries-old cieba and guaraguao trees. Woven into that mangled mess of tree limbs were the bodies of the very old tethered to the too young. Ropes still wound around their waists so they would not be separated in the storm. Bodies piled on top of bodies, face to face, their mouths gaping open as if in the middle of a secret one has yet to tell.