So I try to stop crying, but the tears won’t abide, they just keep sliding down my cheeks till I taste salt in my mouth. When she comes back she has her old record player in her hands. I want to play you something, just lay back and listen, Ana. She brushes her hand across my forehead, wipes the tears away from my face. No lloras, hija. Don’t cry.

She connects the record player and places a record on it. Smiling at me, she drops the needle on the revolving disc. Weepy strains of guitar fill the room followed by the tentative footsteps of piano. Then a voice. A voice that seemed to be singing only to me.

“Chiquitica, you and I know..”

Years would pass and still the song would haunt me, just a skeleton of the melody, the bare bones of the song. The memory of it like a rose in my head, its fragrance filling my reveries and pouring out through my later years. The song is recalled in its first memory, in its first sweetness.