Mary Kinzie Prize for Creative Nonfiction Essay
An excerpt from Contradicting Home; Anecdotes and Aphorisms
Many things went through my mind during those instants of distress. I remembered a time when my grandpa could still walk and talk properly, and he’d offered to pick me up from school. Usually, we would’ve taken a taxi, but that time I told him I had never taken the Transmilenio before and I was curious about the faces squished against the windows that zoomed past us in red buses. And so, he mounted my backpack on his shoulders and we walked together to a nearby bus station. He held me close to him, shielding me away from the reality of Bogotá’s public transportation. There might’ve been creepy men, robbers, and lonely children on that bus. But tucked away beneath my grandpa’s steady arm, all I could feel was the car’s swift motion, which swung in sync with the distant music someone, somewhere, was playing on a loosely-tuned accordion.