Free Entry 1, Week 11

The lung of Cuba
resembles so much the explosion
of sand when lightning strikes.
How this is possible
is only known by true Cubans,
they ones who stood
on street corners when missiles
threatened to ruin dinner.
The brackish wheels of the 1950s
roadster, now used as a taxi,
tremble with the quake of sand.
A young boy, never having seen
lightning before, emits a flooding
of tears down his sun-blistered cheeks.
Just lightning, his father exhales,
surrendering an answer
as brackish as the wheels of the roadster.
The boy breathes in the burning air
and gets a lungful of glass, or what would be
glass had the storm only struck a little
harder. Later that night,
at dinner, the boy asked his father
when the sunshine would stop,
when sand would become the only way to see.
Words blistered inside the father's mouth,
fighting departure from his lips.
Cuba will never be without
sunshine, he said, we ride out our days
as lungs in each other's chest.
You in mine and i in your's.
This will be possible, but only known by us.