LITERATURE: Sheltering Desire

Argentine author Gabriela Cabezón Cámara feeds the creative impulse.

There was one that was alive: wet, black fur dripping over his tiny body like ripples of water over bone. But he was alive, the puppy’s black eyes shone, and I looked at him and scooped him up out of the puddle with my two hands. His look was a shout; if he could have spoken, his words would have to be written in gigantic, capital letters, and — as if he had supernatural powers, as if he could give more weight to his request with evidence — the tiny, black-boned skeletons of his brothers appeared, sort of floating between the gutter and the air, forever still, in a dark, amphibious sadness.