Status Updates From Sonora

“No pain, no pain, no pain,” he says over and over again. “When we leave, if I have to fill something out like ‘country of birth’… I will say I do not know where I am from. I have no birth certificate. I was born walking. That is what I will say, Rachel. My country disappeared when I was born.”

“The sounds of the shofar emulate the sound of a cry, every variation of sobbing,” he said once finished.
“That’s what the shofar is supposed to be?”
“Yes,” the youngest said, “And the last, did you hear how it cuts like a gasp, like a pant? It’s the last sobs of a desperate man hoping for another year. Shana tova.”

“My loves have always been seared with this singing, this singing written by death, the way some lands have always been crippled by war.”