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61 Venus in Miami Beach What calls her to the sea? She rises, steps toward the shore with the temperament of a bride, her shadow a long train pulled across the sand behind her, parting a flock of seagulls screeching away into the wind. Her swollen ankles and frail shoulders disappear inch by inch under her body as she wades into the water, becoming as young as I remember her in a photo posing like a mermaid for my father. Once, as gorgeous as her name—Geysa— once a girl chasing fireflies who hadn’t lost her home and country, sisters and husband, once a mother who watched me as I watch her now, afraid of her alone with the sea. I wave to her, but she turns away from me, fixes her eyes on the horizon and beyond at nothing I can see, needing no one it seems, like Venus’s gaze I’m tempted to think, born full-grown out of the sea. But today, she’s not a goddess or a girl, not my mother, but simply a her, floating in the circle of her own arms, a water lily, tranquil and sure of her being, being. ...

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