Tiffany Takes Flight
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My parents’ Spanish was never good at all, and the guys on the beach in Mazatlán didn’t speak English very well. This became increasingly apparent as my parents and the men running parasailing on the touristy beach outside our hotel tried to negotiate price and logistics.
My sister was six or so, and I was about 11. We couldn’t wait to fly off the shore over the Pacific, free from the worries of the land. Our mom and nana were pretty ready to go as well. It was our dad who was digging his heels in, metaphorically as his body backed him up, edges of his bare feet burrowing into the warm, Mexican sand.
Caesar, the owner of the boat and parasail, was trying to demonstrate how six-year-old Tiffany would be strapped to his chest, so that their weight, in tandem, would exceed the minimum for parasailing. My mom smiled, excited that both of her daughters would be able to fly today.
My dad continued to protest, concerned that the beach take offs and landings were too close to the hotels along the shore. My parents argued, not fully noticing that Tiffany was completely strapped in and ready to go.
There went my sister
So high above all of us
And dad’s live body
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CLS Sandoval
CLS Sandoval, PhD (she/her) is a pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes. She’s a flash fiction and poetry editor for Dark Onus Lit. She has presented over 50 times at communication conferences, published 15 academic articles, two academic books, three full-length literary collections, three chapbooks, as well as flash and poetry pieces in several literary journals, recently including Opiate Magazine, The Journal of Magical Wonder, and A Moon of One’s Own. She is raising her daughter and dog with her husband in Alhambra, CA.
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