Teresa sells television antennas in the Zócalo. On her way to work she walks slowly through the mostly empty plaza and thinks of her sister who lives in a place called Ohio now. Her sister who was beautiful before she had children. She sends pictures. Teresa never had children herself but she was never beautiful to begin with. What does all this mean? She crosses the plaza in the lonely light, the sun like a sad red eye rising, and thinks having a sister is a strange thing. Her sister’s name is Rosella, a name her sister always said she hated though it went so well with the beauty she used to have. Her sister lost her beauty and Teresa lost a sister. Some days lost is the only word there is.

Teresa carries her Ohio sister in a small hungry place in her stomach that food won’t satisfy.

The light slants across the plaza, pinkish yellow now. The four-sided arch looms. It’s really an unfinished building they call an arch. They started to build a new Parliament here. Then they saw that the land was too marshy. Didn’t they take off their shoes and feel it? Maybe politicians who want to build new Parliaments never take off their shoes. But aren’t all buildings, people, unfinished? We build and we build and still we’re incomplete? You want to think about things on a morning like this. In silence like this. You want to remember. You want to find what’s lost. I know where to find Rosella and still she’s lost? It’s a question for God who looms above this arch as indifferent to sisters as He is to Parliaments, as He is to so many other things. Teresa carries her Ohio sister in a small hungry place in her stomach that food won’t satisfy. When she was a girl Rosella banged her on the nose with a teapot. She forgave her that afternoon. She forgives her again this morning. For the tea pot. For not being beautiful anymore. For being lost. Rosella. Rosella! From her eyes not her mouth in the now noisier morning.