Elena pulled away, a thin red line imprinted on her cheek. “What’s inside them?”
“What are you doing?” her cousin Mateo asked, kicking a stone. cracks adobe
She never looked into the cracks again.
That night, Elena dreamed she was small as a termite. She walked inside the crack. The walls were not dirt but skin, warm and porous. She passed a frozen moment: her great-grandfather weeping over a dead horse. Then another: her mother, at seven, hiding a stolen cookie in her pocket. Then a future she didn’t recognize: a woman with Elena’s face standing in a room that didn’t exist yet, holding a phone, crying. Elena pulled away, a thin red line imprinted on her cheek