My most recent story, Blanquitos, is out today in Typebar Magazine. It’s one of the TropiWeirdest of my stories yet, and I’d be honored if you read it.

Originally slated to come out a little earlier, it ended up published the same day we realized there might be something wrong with our old and much-beloved dog Biz. I talked about how I felt about it at the time, but something I’d not mentioned was that as I watched over her this story began to emerge.

I’d always wanted to write about this story I’d heard as a kid that had an almost urban legend quality to it - a neighborhood abandoned to the jungle, overrun by secondary growth and so on. I must explain that this story seed rattled around in my mind, lurking for years - perhaps as long as a decade - before the conditions were right.

So, you might be able to see how as I was writing this story, with Biz laying behind me, nearly unrecognizable from the pain sipping away at her, the idea of a creeping and persistent danger gained more clarity. And as I was in this state of flow, the core story growing into a complete draft, I couldn’t shake this feeling that the story was draining Biz’s lifeforce in order to grow. Silly, yes, but it seemed to encapsulate my contradictory emotions: my fear that Biz might be dying right behind me wrestling with the joy that bringing an old idea to life on the page can bring.

What an accursed feeling that was.

I like to think I captured some of that terrible energy in the story but I’ll let you be the judge of how successful that was.

In my previous newsletter on TropiWeird, I mentioned the kind of double-vision living with colonialism brings. How, given enough time, even hard-won victories like getting the U.S. Navy out of Vieques can be walked back. I went to school on a military base, with students who couldn’t wait to - as one put as his yearbook quote - “get off this rock and back to civilization.” My class valedictorian, born and raised in Puerto Rico to a military family, wrote an essay about her personal hero, Oliver North.

I hope you enjoy the story, and remember: nostalgia’s a boomerang.