Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World

“Aristotle Mendoza was not born to wear glasses.”

“Apparently, Aristotle Mendoza’s eyes do not agree.”

I know I don’t know much about love—but what I know about love, my mother and Dante taught me.”

And I was starting to discover that change didn’t just happen—I had to make it happen

If we’re lucky. If we’re very lucky, the universe will send us the people we need to survive.

I remembered Dante on his bed, and me sitting on his big chair as he read the definition for that word from his well-worn dictionary: Calm, peaceful, untroubled, tranquil. “We’re done for, Ari,” he’d said. “Neither one of us are any of those things.”

Poems do not belong on a painting. And I do not belong in this world

She ran her fingers through my hair. “Oh, Ari, let your sisters love you. Let yourself be loved. For all you know, there’s a long line of people wanting you to let them in.”

I wanted to tell her how much I loved her, but I just couldn’t. I just, I don’t know. Sometimes I had beautiful words living inside of me and I just couldn’t push those words out so that other people could see they were there.

A part of me wanted to run away from all the complications of being in love with Dante. Maybe Ari plus Dante equaled love, but it also equaled complicated. It also equaled playing hide-and-seek with the world. But there was a difference between the art of running and the art of running away.

Dear Dante,

I don’t like it when you get mad at me. It makes me feel bad. I don’t know what else to say about this. I have to think about this some more. You getting angry isn’t part of the way I thought of you. But you shouldn’t have to fit in my definition of you. I don’t want you to live in the prison of my thoughts. I’m the only one who should be living there.

The problem is this: I think about you all the time, about how it might feel to watch you stand in front of me and you would take your clothes off and say: This is me. And I would take my clothes off and say: This is me.

And we would touch. And it would feel like I’d never touched anybody or anything, like I’d never really known what touch was until I felt your hands on my skin.

I keep picturing my finger running over your lips over and over again.

I try not to think about these things. I don’t want to think about them.

But the thoughts are so incredibly beautiful to me. And I’m asking myself why the entire world believes that these thoughts—my thoughts—are so ugly. I know you don’t have the answers to my questions. But I think you ask those questions too.

I just keep picturing you in a hospital room, your smile almost hidden by the bruises those guys left on you. They thought you were just an animal they could kick around and even kill. But I think it was them—they were the animals.

When will we all get to be human, Dante?