I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.
Catalog
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Benjamin Alire Sáenz (born August 16, 1954) is an American poet, novelist and writer of children's books. 2Life He was born at Old Picacho in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, the fourth of seven children, and was raised on a small farm near Mesilla, New Mexico. He graduated from Las Cruces High School in 1972. That fall, he entered St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado, where he received a BA degree in humanities and philosophy in 1977. He studied theology at the University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium from 1977 to 1981. He was a priest for a few years in El Paso, Texas before leaving the order. In 1985, he returned to school, and studied English and creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso where he earned an MA degree in creative writing. He then spent a year at the University of Iowa as a PhD student in American literature. A year later, he was awarded a Stegner Fellowshi
Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's…
But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.
Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you’re thinking but because you’re feeling. Because you’re feeling too much. And you can’t always control the things you do when you’re feeling too much.
I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.
But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.
...I don't always have to understand the people I love.
Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you’re thinking but because you’re feeling. Because you’re feeling too much. And you can’t always control the things you do when you’re feeling too much.
I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.
To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.
I wanted to close my eyes and let the silence swallow me whole.
I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That’s why I loved and hated summers. Because they…
Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.
I wanted to be a part of the fearless storm, to be one with it, to refuse to see myself as its passive victim or its naive, romantic worshipper falling down on my knees in a humility I didn’t possess. I wanted to be a part of the order and the chaos, the violence and the raging waters.
Storms and wars were always beginning and always ending, and we lived our lives in the aftermath. There must’ve already been some kind of body count. What was it about us that we measured our catastrophes in bodies? Maybe it consoled those of us who survived.
There is something compelling and seductive about a dangerous sky. The dark clouds made the city appear ancient and wise and civilized, made the buildings look like abandoned ruins that kept all the secrets of the dead.
I wanted to tell him I cared too much. What I didn’t care about was picking up a guy for a night. Maybe I was going through a phase, but love for a night wasn’t love, and taking a stranger to bed wasn’t any different than buying a lottery ticket. Did you really expect to win?
I loved mornings—the only time of the day that I was free from the prison of words.
I didn't know I’d fallen in love with him, though of course I had, didn’t begin to know it until I sat next to him, smoking a cigarette on the back steps of my apartment on that cloudy day in August just before the rains came.