Freedom’s Address

My childhood home stood two blocks from the sea

not metaphorically

Truly

Two blocks of crumbling pavement
past the embassies with their iron gates
and foreign flags lifting beautifully
in the Caribbean wind
like freedom had an address
and we did not

I remember the terrible contrast of it

chauffeurs polishing black cars
while old women downstairs
watered thin soup to feed five mouths

Diplomats drinking imported whiskey
behind guarded glass
while boys in torn sandals
kicked flat soccer balls through alleyways
smelling of salt
kerosene
and exhaustion

And yet the ocean belonged to everyone

That was the unbearable beauty of Cuba

The poor could stand at the Malecón at dusk
beside men who had never missed a meal
and both would fall silent
before the same enormous water

Because the sea did not care
who was oppressed
and who carried a passport out

It touched every stone equally

At night
the waves struck the seawall so hard
the spray reached the streets
cool against our faces
like the island itself
refusing to die quietly

I grew up understanding freedom
not as politics

but as distance

As horizon

As the ache of watching ships
become smaller and smaller
until they dissolved completely
into another life

Some nights
the grownups lowered their voices
when certain subjects entered the room

But the ocean
the ocean never whispered

It roared openly beside us

Restless
Uncontained

I think that is why Cubans carry sadness
so elegantly

We were raised beside something infinite
while living inside limitation

Raised hearing waves
crash against stone
over
and over
and over again

as if the earth itself
believed no wall
should remain standing forever

Even now
far from that coastline
I still need water near me

Not for leisure
Not for beauty

For memory

Because somewhere inside me
there is still a little girl
walking toward the sea at twilight
past embassies glowing gold
past tired buildings collapsing inward
past the unbearable divide
between the free and the trapped

believing
with her entire heart
that the horizon meant
there had to be more than this