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
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
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