from Toston The floor collects the cells of your skin and no one else's. You're breathing in only yourself in the dust. Again, this doesn't sadden you one bit. Perhaps you used up the last drops of grief after you lost your children. When you die, you're the last piece of evidence that your parents ever lived. And you? What proof that you were once loved? Slowly you rise and walk from one room to another and both rooms scarcely notice the difference. You are, dear friend, officially a toston that 50¢ Mexican coin, half a peso, relic of the past, purveyor of the simple pleasures of your childhood--paletita de dulce sabor mango, canica ojo de dragon, galletita de mantequilla, cacahuate japones. Moctezuma's profile is engraved on this silver moon, he always facing away from the sea, looking back at the ruins of Tenochtitlan, not with anguish or disdain, but with a dignified gaze that says, What is done is done.

No use crying over what can never change. Or what is gone.