Andrea-and-Diego

The victory Carla Andrea López Mata       I don’t know why he came around these parts if we’d already warned him. It was five months ago that he started up with his campaigns again. There he was, all full of himself, with his same old stories and tall tales. And we let him know. My compadre Lencho, his son Filomeno, and I went looking for him together and told him so. “Watch yourself,” Lencho warned him. “You’re not fooling us anymore.” He just smiled and made us more promises. Education, jobs, this and that. All lies! But Filomeno stopped him dead. “You only fatten a pig once!” the boy said. “And you’re already on your third time!” That shut him right up. He got all serious, acting offended. Then he had his goons throw us out by force, that son of a bitch! As they were beating us out of there, I warned him one last time. “You’ll find out what fucking hell is waiting for you if you ever set foot in our town!” Then everything went black. When I woke up, I was sprawled in the middle of

It Rains Carla Andrea López Mata       “It’s raining,” my mother said from bed and went back to sleep. And in that instant, my delirium began. I spent the whole day without eating, without sleeping, just staring at the sky, waiting for that wonderful smell to return. My mother? Worried, hysterical. They ran all kinds of tests to find out what was wrong with me, and nothing. I kept waiting, dragging myself across the yard as I watched the sky, waiting for the longed-for downpour. Soon the rain returned, and with it, my scent. Delicious, I thought as I filled my lungs, remembering every taste and smell I had known until then. There’s nothing like it. “It smells like wet earth,” my mother said as she put another sweater on me. And I understood: the smell was coming from below. I tried to crawl outside, but my mother stopped me and took me back to the hallway. “Don’t get wet,” she said. And who wants to get wet? I thought, annoyed. Soon it grew dark, and she made me go to bed against my