Island Like You

"You ride it out on a wave of sound pouring from the cinder-block jukebox of El Building, with stereos blasting salsas from open windows, where men in phosphorescent white T-shirts hang over the sills, tossing piropos down to the girls going somewhere in a hurry, fanning the sidewalk heat with their swinging skirts, crossing single file over the treacherous bridge of a wino’s legs at his daily post. And Cheo, the bodega man, sweeps the steps to his store and tells the doubting woman with hands on her hips that green bananas are hard to get. Everyone knows he skims. Still, Cheo’s is the best place for fresh codfish, plantains, and gossip. At day’s end, you scale the seven flights to an oasis on the roof, high above the city noise, where you can think to the rhythms of your own band. Discordant notes rise with the traffic at five, mellow to a bolero at sundown. Keeping company with the pigeons, you watch the people below, flowing in currents on the street where you live, each one alone in a crowd, each one an island like you."

— Judith Ortiz Cofer (1952 – 2016) was a Puerto Rican American author. Her critically acclaimed and award-winning work spans a range of literary genres including poetry, short stories, autobiography, essays, and young-adult fiction.