On summer nights
Papi lets me help out
at the music store.
Papi says you can
read people’s souls
by the music
they listen to;
that hearts
fly home
when the music’s
Just Right.
Papi says
people come here
to buy dreams
and memories.
Mrs. García
gets off at the bus stop
in front of the store.
She walks slowly,
one hand on her back,
trying to push away an ache.
She’s been cleaning houses
all day,
but still she smiles
and stops to talk.
João hangs out by the door
pretending not to watch
the girls go by.
“A boy that handsome
can only be trouble,”
Mrs. García says.
João likes to talk music
with Papi.
Mrs. García
On the day of my
quinceañera,
I wore a gown
of blushing pink
and a gold tiara.
The tiny rosebuds on my cake
matched the real ones
in my bouquet,
and my gifts reached the ceiling.
A handsome mariachi band
played all afternoon
and serenaded me with
“Las mañanitas.”
On the day of my
quinceañera,
I was in Mariachi Heaven.
João A girl from Ipanema
(no one ever knew her name)
caught the eye of a composer
who would never be the same.
“She’s a little bit of samba,
with a pinch of jazz thrown in.
She’s the strum of my
violão—
such a girl there’s never been.”
Then he wrote a brand-new song
for the girl without a name,
who strolled along the beach
and brought the bossa nova fame.
Copyright © 2011 by Julia Durango (Author); Fabricio VandenBroeck (Illustrator). All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
