Sin Embargo

Nevertheless.

That is the word that starts nearly every statement I make to my clients as I’m detailing what they can expect during treatment, or during a forensic evaluation should they ever be permitted to witness in court.

I say it in Spanish because though many of them have been here for decades and no longer speak first in Spanish, most of them still think first in it. Their children, when and if they accompany them to the First State Survivors Center, roll their eyes at me.

Nevertheless. Sin embargo.

Now say it with an English accent and an American reading of the interlingual homographs — sin embargo — and it becomes policy. Banned and barricaded, it says, because of transgression. Your transgression, your community’s, your state’s…

Short story in Latin@ Rising, Wings Press, 2017. Click to order.