There are sounds that never completely leave the body. They fade for years, hide beneath work, distance, language, and adulthood. Then one afternoon, without warning, they return exactly as they first arrived—raw, immediate, and alive. For me, it was the scream of a mother beside her dying child.

I was still a boy during the Salvadoran civil war when I began working in the hills outside San Jorge. Poverty and war often forced children into adulthood long before they understood what adulthood meant. By the time I should have still been worrying about school or games, I was already walking long distances carrying sacks through dry creek beds and orchards, helping harvest fruit to put food on our table.

I remember those mornings clearly: the dust rising beneath my bare feet, the heat beginning before noon, and the smell of guavas ripening in the trees. The long paths wound through Jocote Dulce and the hills beyond town. Sometimes a torogoz—El Salvador’s national bird—would land briefly on a branch nearby, its colors startling against the dryness of the landscape. Even during war, beauty continued appearing in small places.

That morning had begun like any other. A woman from town had taken me along to help gather fruit from neglected trees in the countryside. I........

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