“He had been a breathing corpse drifting downstream. Now the thunder of his own heartbeat shook him hard in rude awakening. He had already resigned to a tomb ­kind and lovely death. But now he wanted something. He gasped for air as he felt the life return to him. His lungs filled with water like a man who¹s drowned. But that was the first feeling of being alive and so he embraced it. He was not dead. This was the beginning of everything.”

Niñas de azul by Carolina Cardona