Two Pairs of Kiwi Eyes

A love story

Hope Rising
The Memoirist

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Juan Luis and Yamini (author’s own collection)

It was December 2020, and it was cold—frigid, really. Upstate New York winters are not for the faint of heart, and despite having grown up in New England, I had never grown accustomed to such bitter temperatures. When the wind blew, I could feel my eyelashes freezing.

It was December of 2020, and I was homeless. Or rather, we were homeless — my little sister and I. She had flown across the country on a rescue mission to save me from my abusive marriage, and save me, she did.

On the first night of homelessness, we drove and drove until we were certain that my husband wouldn’t be able to track us down. A mixture of fear and cold gave me a relentless case of the shivers. Neither of us knew whether to laugh or cry.

We stopped at a Target in a town that seemed a million miles away but was really less than an hour from the place I used to call home. We bought clothes, knowing we didn’t have any. Knowing we both had to go to work the next day.

I texted every local contact on my phone, begging for a place to stay, and my sister did the same. First, we listened to the sound of silence and then to the sound of others having boundaries—boundaries that did not include unexpected visitors sleeping in the living room.

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Hope Rising
The Memoirist

Mixed race and multicultural | Cat mom | Editor for Out of the Woods | I write to heal myself and others | Support me at https://ko-fi.com/aashaanna