For several days now, stressed or not, my hand hits the snooze button, my fingers tap across the screen of my phone, press play and words like the ones below color the four walls of my foggy subconscious, starting my days with sweetness of pure and pulsing love. I sing through, think through most songs on the playlists I follow. And soon enough, I find myself forging a channel in my speech for them to come tumbling out somewhere in my day and I am thrilled to be reminded of how much I am loved. 

Maybe this may not be your music preference, and that is okay. I do invite you to take a moment to be in the secret place, press mute  and let the lyrics splash refreshing peace on to your busy soul. Celebrate Love with me. Doesn't it feel good to be always have such a gift despite stress, trials and mountains?

Who has not been touched by the baby’s breath of first love, the threat of another lover or the reeling pain of a broken heart? Love is as unexpected as a butterfly coming to rest on your shoulder. It is as fragile as an old, caring couple. It is the icepack of forgiveness on an inflamed wound. Sometimes, it lets go abruptly while other times, it is released with a hope that it returns, lasting and restored, unlike Blair’s, hollowed, ghost-like and filled with the shadows of a former infatuation, which she fed on for ten years. Most of all love, like independence, has many enemies. 
In “The Snoring” Elsa, a teenager thrown out the house by her sole guardian, her grandmother, ends up forging a relationship with Dolores, a Dominicana who worked two jobs to support her family back home and avoided immigration raids. Both are baffled by the illness that is causing Elsa to rapidly lose weight and to have faithful nightmarish dreams.

It is clear that Fatty, in “Fatty and the Big House,” is not over Nancy, who was shipped off to Holland by her parents before Fatty and Nancy could be together for good.  Fatty, who nurses his wounds by hooking up with Annie, going to work in Aruba and then building “a house so big it would block out the sun from shining” on Nancy’s parents’ house, is in for a bigger surprise. 

Clement and Blair are the main characters of “New Year’s Eve Born.” This story may be a St. Martin-version of Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy often retold but never like this. 

Nkrumah, the love struck twelve-year-old in “The Rightful Heirs,” is entrusted with a heavy secret that terrifies him and has Winston, his late father’s friend, nervous.

And of course, the simple rollercoaster ride between the young man and woman in “Love Songs Make You Cry,” which develops, teasing and, slow, comes to a tearful halt a few months later.

It is hard to ignore the strong currents of nationhood, independence, and identity in this collection that is also centered on the love one has for his or her country and people despite political manipulation. 

And, even though the characters leave the island, like Fatty or his woman, Annie, by force or escape, Sekou anchors the stories in St. Martin, often times appearing in the book as S’maatin, which is divided into a Dutch and a French territory. His characters reside in or roam freely throughout districts like Middle Region, Great Bay, Dutch Quarter, Sucker Garden, St. James, Colombier, and Grand Case as though one. The young man in the title story affirms: 

An’ befo’ these leaders here talk of real independence and unity dey wahn make this island a showcase of something French or Dutch or some other whitewashed form of dependency and false identity. … Do I look like a European? I was born here, so how could I be French or Dutch[…] I’m a S’maatiner, a Caribbean man, and that’s what counts?
In addition, the other Caribbean women, “so-called illegal aliens” from the Dominican Republic, bookend Sekou’s work, one is determined to stay, the other willing to leave. It is unfortunate that the St. Martin woman does not have a strong presence; she is hardly in the spotlight and if the light shines on parts of her, she is a periphery, working, struggling, or observing those around her.