They stuff cotton down your mouth
Because it’s the only thing that doesn't choke you
When they try to muffle your sounds out
But you scream with your eyes better than you
Ever did with words

It’s a sharp sound that hurts to look at
And you knew that contradictions were the best arguments
you said  “Arguments are the best way to show someone
How much you love them because
you are giving them your words
And that is the best thing to give.”  disagreement said “Or you could give em’
Some of your M&M;’s.”

They hung mosaics of your destruction on the walls and called it “Art”
So you punched a hole through your bathroom mirror and called it “Creation”
Spent the fourth day naming your shards “Zues” “Cordelia”. Saved the sharpest one
And called it “Helen”, said “Pain only ever hurts when its beautiful.” Disagreement said
“You’re a ****** up sadomasochistic *****”

On the fifth day you dreamt your father held you
Except it wasn't your father it was a ******* who found you
frozen to a street light
On the sixth day you called me and said: “I have a name for creation;
It’s destruction.”
On the seventh day they found you praying to the  images on a TV screen
Holding onto a mathematical calculation in your hand
Calling it the formula to happiness
The numbers spelled out




D   R  U  G  S

Curled up in an old quilt,
Staring intently at the ceiling
As if it holds the answers to sleep.

Rolling and turning,
Becoming ensnared in your blanket,
In your protection from the cold.

Toss the thing off in protest and punishment
Wait as the chill sets in
Forgive the blanket (it doesn’t know any better).

Start counting sheep
Everyone says it works
You quickly find out it doesn’t.

Your back to staring at the ceiling
And begging for sleep to grace your presence
Asking for the peace of Slumber.

Unity
Why does it mean so much?
Why does it matter that it should be amongst us, between friends, in families, our congregation, neighborhood communities
Let's think about the word unity again
The first three letters stop look closely
U. N. I
You and I
It's Ironic how that works
We can't go anywhere with our relationship with the people we love without this next statement in mind
Humans creation was designed to be a continuous population and togetherness Yet we always find a way to remain separated. Is it possible you could look deep in your heart and soul and find you need me just as much as I need you.
The topic of unity isn't just one underlying issue. It involves communication
When you're happy and feel you have to celebrate, send me a text
Call when you're sad because I know you battle with being depressed
Tell me about your fears no I can't take them away I'm not Jehovah but understand I'm here. Or even when we have a disagreement
How am I supposed to know your upset
It's not supernatural
I don't speak telepathical
I feel like khalid. Can you just talk to me?
Tell me how your feeling voice your opinions that's what's wrong with society. You know why because the lack unity
Patience is also key but that's another song for a different time. We're towards the end **** before I go this is what you should know
Coming together is a begining
Keeping together is progress, working together is success
Without unity there can be no strength

Lost soles .
       . . . never free . . .
Follow me . . . see . . . have no fear .
           But you have handed me  . . .
one left shoe and a-not- her .

Come old lady who lives in the shoe . . .
Where are your children ? ? ?
. . . a little unsteady ?

Lost soles to memory , like Kentucky lightning on a warm Alabama night .
All hail the underdog .
All hail  . . .

The first left one fits nicely
But the right foot has disagreement . . .
feeling he has been left out .

Kurt Queller uses narrative criticism to analyze Mark 3:1-6, the healing miracle story in the gospel of Mark.  Queller’s narrative criticism includes “echoes of the Exodus liberation narrative” , echoes of Deuteronomy’s covenant language and Sabbatical provisions , intratextual echoes in Mark , and independent echoes in the other synoptic gospels.  Queller uses these echoes to fill in the gaps he finds in the story of Jesus healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath.
In the beginning of his criticism, Queller lists the gaps in Mark 3:1-6’s narrative that he seeks to fill: the meaning of the withered hand, Jesus’ reason for healing on the Sabbath, His reason for considering the withered hand life-threatening, why it is a choice between good and evil, et cetera.  He begins filling these gaps by referencing intertextual echoes of Mark 3:1-6 in Exodus.  Jesus’ command to the man with the withered hand in Mark 3:5, “Stretch out your hand,” is echoed in Exodus 14:16 where God commands Moses, “stretch out your hand.” When the man with the withered hand stretches out his hand, his hand is restored. Likewise, when Moses stretches out his hand, the Reed Sea parts, resulting in the restoration of the Israelites’ freedom.
Queller’s reference to this echo in Exodus, paired with other echoes he mentions in Deuteronomy, helped me begin to understand Jesus’ insistence on healing the withered hand. Queller was able to use the echoes to fill in the gaps I previously could not fill. In Deuteronomy 15, God’s covenant requires liberal lending and debt forgiveness to the poor on the Sabbath year. God reminds the Israelites that He delivered them from Egypt in verse 15, and He claims that this is the reason for His liberal Sabbatical law. Thus, this Deuteronomic prescription for Sabbath observance is a continuation of the Exodus liberation narrative. Queller mentions these echoes in Exodus and Deuteronomy to draw a larger narrative framework for understanding Mark’s controversial healing story.
In my initial reading, I recognized that a withered hand is not necessarily a matter of life and death. Like Queller, this was a gap that I initially set out to fill. However, I was unable to fill this gap in a way that completely satisfied my confusion on the matter. Queller’s larger narrative framework for this passage led me to a better understanding of why Jesus considered the withered hand worthy to heal on the Sabbath.
According to Queller’s filling of the gaps, the withered hand is an affliction that can be compared to the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt. The withered hand also embodies the economic predicament of the poor, who remain enslaved to their debt to the rich.  Such enslavement could be a death sentence, which is why the Sabbath requires the liberation of slaves and debt forgiveness of the poor. It seems plausible to me that a withered hand could cause a man to be enslaved and/or perpetually poor. This line of reasoning, provided by Queller’s larger narrative framework, allowed me to truly see how the Sabbath could require Jesus’ healing of the withered hand.
Another gap Queller and I similarly set out to fill is the question of what constitutes as doing good and what constitutes as doing evil on the Sabbath. This gap also arises from Mark 3:4, in which Jesus asks, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to ****?” (Mark 3:4 NIV). In his analysis of this particular part of this particular verse, Queller points out a small important detail that I originally missed. Mark 3:4 does not set the frame for a passive, inner choice between good and evil.  The literal wording says, “to do good or to do evil.” The choice between good and evil on the Sabbath thereby requires action.
While recognizing that required action is problematic for the restful nature of the Sabbath, Queller supports his assertion by referencing Deuteronomy 30. Deuteronomy 30’s prescription for obedience of the Sabbath repeats the active command, “do it.”  Queller illustrates the parallelism between Mark and Deuteronomy by placing Deuteronomy 30:14 and Mark 3:4-5 in a figure side-by-side.  Deuteronomy 30:14 says, “The word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, and in your hands, to do it.” With this commandment as the framework, Mark 3:4-5 spells out the Pharisees’ failure to do good; It says, “But they were silent . . . grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man: ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out.”
From this, Queller concludes, “The ‘word’ to be done is already ‘in [their] mouth’ – but they refuse to say anything in response; it is ‘in [their] heart’ – but their heart is hardened against it. It is ‘in [their] hands, to do it’ – but as Jesus turns again to address the man, our attention is directed back to an inert hand, that, in its current withered state, seems unlikely to do anything.”  From this I am now able to conclude that which constitutes as doing “good” on the Sabbath is acting on the word. The word is completely accessible to us, and we must use our mouths, hearts, and hands to act upon it.
This gap of good and evil action that Queller helps fill also provides further evidence for the necessity of Jesus’ healing of the withered hand. Since the hands are required to carry out good action in obedience of the covenant, the withered hand is an affliction that can breach said covenant. Queller asserts that the withered hand symbolizes “the tangible embodiment of [the Pharisees] unwillingness, despite the ‘nearness’ of the word, to do it.”  Jesus, by necessity, must heal this affliction to show the Pharisees how to act according to the law of the Sabbath; “The stretching out of the hand then becomes a ‘witness against’ those who have chosen to forgo or even prohibit action because of exclusively sacral concerns.”  Without the preceding narrative frame of Deuteronomy, such significance of the withered hand for the Sabbath covenant was impossible for me to comprehend.
Though Queller is certainly helpful in providing evidence that enables understanding of the withered hand’s significance, there are parts of his criticism that I find contradictory and unhelpful. This occurs when he references echoes in Exodus and Deuteronomy to provide a framework for understanding the Pharisees’ silence in Mark 3:4 and hardness of hearts in Mark 3:5. He first relates the Pharisees’ hardened heart in response to Jesus’ plea in Mark to the Pharaoh’s hardened heart in response to Moses’ numerous pleas in Exodus. In my concordance work, I also made this connection. However, Queller and I differ in the conclusions we draw from this observation.
Queller draws from Deuteronomy to provide framework in conjunction with Exodus for understanding Mark’s interpretation of the Sabbatical law. He references Deuteronomy 29:19, which warns against thinking one can receive the blessings of the covenant while breaching it in the inner wanderings of the heart. This passive infidelity of the covenant brings God’s curse to the innocent as well as the guilty. Queller uses this context to explain why his literal translation says Jesus “co-aggrieved”  with the Pharisees because of their silence and hard hearts. The Pharisees’ passive, inner breach of the covenant invoked God’s curse on them, as well as the innocent Jesus, according to Queller.  
When I analyzed Jesus’ reaction to the hard hearts of the Pharisees in comparison to God’s reaction to that of the Pharaoh, I realized that the same Greek word was used to describe Jesus’ anger and God’s wrath. However, the consequences of Jesus’ anger and God’s wrath do not relate as clearly as Queller would lead one to believe. As a result of the Pharaoh’s hard heart, God’s wrath leads to the Pharaoh’s ultimate demise. Jesus’ resulting anger from the Pharisees’ hard hearts, on the other hand, catalyzes his decision to heal the withered hand. This action ultimately leads to Jesus’ destruction alone. Jesus, the innocent character, does not fall to the mutual destruction of the Pharisees, per Queller’s argument. I see no destruction of the Pharisees at all. Instead, Jesus restores God’s blessing of the guilty by becoming the recipient of God’s wrath in their place.
This conclusion, though differing from Queller, is consistent with his interpretation of the withered hand. Queller writes, “The withered hand embodies covenant curses invoked against those refusing to ‘open [their] hands’ in liberal lending, instead killing the poor by freezing credit in view of an impending sabbatical debt amnesty” . If the withered hand embodies God’s curse against the Pharisees, then Jesus revokes this curse when he cures the withered hand. Furthermore, the larger narrative framework of Mark’s gospel echoes this conclusion. Jesus’ crucifixion ultimately pays the debt of sinners and liberates them from God’s wrath.
Kurt Queller’s narrative criticism uses intertextuality, a narrative tool that “evokes resonances of the earlier text beyond those explicitly cited”  and “requires the reader to recover unstated or suppressed correspondences between the two texts.”  Such intertextual echoes he references from Deuteronomy and Exodus provide a larger background for interpreting Mark’s healing controversy. This granted me the ability to fill many gaps in the narrative that I was unable to fill prior to reading Queller’s criticism. In a footnote, he explains that his “metalepsis” uses such intertextual echoes for analysis, and, “In narrative, the resultant new figuration operates at what Robert M. Fowler calls the ‘discourse level.’ Metaleptic signification is thus transacted between an implied narrator and an implied audience – as it were, behind the backs of the narrative’s ‘story-level’ participants.”
The intertextual and metaleptic tools that Queller uses for his narrative criticism have proven to be very insightful and helpful for my understanding Mark 3:1-6 in an entirely new way. Even as I disagree with Queller on certain parts of his argument, these points of disagreement pushed me to deepen my own individual reading of the text. In comparing my argument to Queller’s, I realized just how far my initial interpretation was able to go. This narrative criticism answered a lot of my questions and filled many gaps. However, most of my conclusions about the implications and ultimate consequences of the text remain unshaken.  
Bibliography
Queller, Kurt. “Stretch Out Your Hand!” Echo and Metalepsis in Mark’s Sabbath Healing Controversy. Journal of Biblical Literature 129, no. 4 (2010): 737-58.

A hangman once told me,
"It's not the drop, it's the stop."
I was going to argue,
but he pulled the lever.

We know the word.
It's applied to many things.
We disagree to it use.
Simply, we acting the nature of being a human being.

Just because siblings doesn't get along.
It doesn't mean they are dysfunctional.
This just the so call experts speaking.

We all know doctors doesn't agree.
So, how can they apply this tag dysfunctional to anyone?

We could say it were a purpose of God.
To see, how we adjust to our conflicts concerning love.

We saw Cain and Abel have disagreement.
And know how that conclusion ended.

Even family that pretends to get along.
Usually exposes they were fronting all along.

We see this constantly in the news.
Where politicians not even kin to one another?
Seems to act like sisters, mothers, fathers, and brothers.
And this includes aunts and uncles too.

So, are they dysfunctional too?
Because they see things in a different light.
Experts, say it is.
We common sense people just say, it's life.

We not suppose to agree on everything in life.

Once, a word makes it into our vocabulary.
Then people starts using it.
As a every day saying

You dysfunctional.
I'm dysfunctional.
When in truth.
We just being us.

We know the way to love.
We just refuse to show it.

A once dear friend
And I met up;
Twenty years since we spoke,
And neither one could talk.
We left each other's company
On terms of disagreement.

The ice was thick;
The air was clouded;
We stood beneath the shade.

The mountain didn't fall;
The earth didn't swallow;
The roof stayed on.
Nothing cracked our uncertainty.

Then we misquoted some old
Misunderstood memories
Of why we went our ways.
And felt the same.

The minute I set foot in the place,
a rush of emotion overwhelmed me,
every new one a contradiction of the next.
Familiar.Strange.
Friendly. Hostile.
This place was everything and nothing all at once,
my mind could not comprehend it
and my heart shied from my sleeve.
“Nice to see you again.” Familiar strangers greeted me with at the door,
smiling faces with something different in their eyes,
the teeth echoed there but with an underlying undertone.
Naively I wished to see love, and somewhere I did.
Not love, I reminded myself,
conditional love.
Not the same thing,
not one bit.
I gathered strength.
I crossed the entrance into the main part of the building
and immediately wanted to turn around and run.
I’d been in churches before,
been amazed at first by their beautiful decor,
high ceilings and the way the priests
convincing voice traveled through the room.
But just as quickly as I had noticed the beauty, I noticed what it
cheaply concealed with crayola carvings
and thrift-store folk-lore.
I saw through the supposed messenger of God
and the way his dramatic gestures
and loud attire
drew attention unto himself rather than the message,
that his words were the unfolding of a play,
merely theatrical.
Most of all I noticed the absence of the very thing said to be celebrated in this place,
this building said to be its home.
I recoiled in my seat instinctively,
not from the collection plate,
but from the absence of god.
But this was like no church I’d been in, not really a church at all.
The decorations simple, bright but not gaudy,
the preachers many and seemingly without a need for individual importance. Chairs in rows, comfortable but not overly so,
instead of the wooden pews.
Hues of serenity hug the walls, warmth hovers.
This place, where I’d learned, conquered, crushed, played, cried, mourned.
Grown.
The images seared.
Every one of these people served as mothers and fathers of sorts,
referring to me as their sister,
making me feel so included that they became part of me,
literally.
A family, a growth, a friend, a tumor.
They locked themselves in my every cell,
rooted in my genes.
The blame a disagreement, the loss a limb.

And there she was,
the Queen of the Faithful,
dragging my severed limb behind her as she is warmly welcomed by my family,
into my home.
They flock her with smiles and love,
pure love,
although still conditional,
there are no lies in those eyes.
They cherish their own,
shun the rest,
and she will always be one of them, she was born to play this role.
And she smiles with the same teeth she sank into my gut when she threw me away,
grin stained with my blood.
Had she ever really loved me,
were we ever truly friends, so close as to honestly be pronounced sisters?
Yes, only conditionally.
I miss her,
but the Queen must not mix with the world,
a world I now belong to fully.

Does she bear any of the responsibility
for my retreat into
the dark abyss I had always been warned about,
the sins that seemed as sweet as sugar,
as sultry as silk?
Or was my dwindling self-control and my secret,
impulsive longing for the unknown too strong,
a spiritual suicide waiting to happen?
Rejection lead me astray,
and the world showed me belonging of a different sort.
A place my spontaneity could dig its claws into,
somewhere my talents could be used.
Misused.
As I sit in the room and look towards her,
meeting her eyes, I instinctively look down,
guilty for daring to look at her.
The Slave of Indulgence staring down the Queen of Purity?
It is unacceptable.
This sign of defeat so unlike me,
but my minds been misty on the subject of self as of late.

The one thing on my mind throughout this meeting of worshipers is not god, but of this:
Is the Queen burdened by the ****** limb,
as the Slave is left empty without it?
Forever Draining and
Forever Straining.
No relief.

And that’s it.
They announce it.
I’m cast out, rejected, excommunicated, disfellowshipped, forgotten.
Free.
Dead.
I walk out, out of the door, the parking lot.
Out of the search-light, the prison, the circle, the family. Out of their lives.
I run, lungs tangled dusty plastic bags,
heart begging to collapse.
My body always screams, curses, whines, ******* when I use it.
So I abuse it.
I crawl, I claw, I fly down the street.
To a bench, an oasis, a shelter.
I roll, I light, I exhale.
I wonder what they would think of me now.
I pop, I grind, I inhale.
I see in numbers and feel in colors,
the world equals nothing and my corpus is pumped with cold, black, but I don’t care.
Because the world is uncaring and cruel and the Arcadia promised to me, the one that heals, has marked me unfit. So I quit.
What is it you want, why is it I’m here? Does God love us all, or thrive on our fear?
Whatever is out there, here my plea.
No more illusions or tricks of the eye, show me, unmask reality, strip its disguise.
Flames, smoke, and nothing.
I see me, and my sanity,
and the universe speaks back,
“Conditionally.”

It was the Spring of 1908. Magdalena looked upon the water as it glistened in the sunlight.

A group of men stood beside her to her left, leaning against the railing of the boat as she was and looking out at the endless Atlantic ocean. The pungent smell of their cigar smoke reminding her of her father and his friends back home in Italy. She could not understand what these men were saying, but their words and laughter with each other comforted her.  They were all on their way to America, and their dreams were seemingly coming true. The spray of the ocean, and the brisk breeze, felt refreshing against her cheeks as Magdalena inhaled the fresh, cool air.

Magdalena looked over at her poor sister and tried to comfort her. Maria still was suffering from motion sickness, and she leaned over the railing in miserable anticipation to *****. Ladies and girls in babushkas were singing nearby, laughing with each other in the joy of each other's company. Magdalena really wanted her sister to experience the joy she was feeling, that these women and men were feeling around her.

She had to worry about her sister all the time. At age sixteen, Magdalena always felt responsible for Maria, especially now that she felt she had dragged her with her on this large passenger boat traveling across the vast Atlantic, a ride that seemed endless.

Maria was not quite fifteen, and she seemed more like a little girl to her older sister. Back in their small village in Italy, they both knew what their fate would be.

"You are lucky to get what you get", Magdalena recalled her father saying to her. "You are not the pretty one in the family, and we are not rich!"

Maria's father, Matteo, was not a bad man, but a blunt one. He knew he had to marry off his daughters one day, and the day came that Magdalena's father received an offer from a man almost thirty-five years older than she was for his daughter's hand in marriage. He was a simple peasant farmer, like her father was, and he went to the same  Catholic church as Magdalena and her family did.

"I don't want to marry him!" Magdalena confessed to her mother, Bella. "I don't want that life, Mama!"

"You don't need to love the man to marry him!" Bella shouted. "Don't let your father hear what you are saying! You need to be grateful! Do you think we can take care of you forever?"

Magdalena tried to be grateful. Out of eleven children that her mother bore, only six survived. It was not an easy life.   Her brother, Matteo, the third, and her sisters, Sofia and Arietta , were older than she was.  Maria, and her brother, Alberto, came after her.

Her father had already arranged for marriages for Sofia and Arietta. Both of them were currently pregnant, and Magdalena did not know if they were happy or not. Between the two of them, they already had five children. She never heard them complain, but she also rarely saw them smile. It was as if they accepted their fate with quiet submission and without a scrap of passion for their existence.

Magdalena looked over at her sister. Maria was retching, her hair hanging down about her. Madgalena lifted her sister's hair off of her sister's face, and gave her sister a handkerchief for her to wipe her face with.

"I am so sorry" Magdalena said, deep remorse in her expression.

Maria looked over at her sister, with her pretty green eyes, and asked, "Why?"

"Because I made you do this", Magdalena confessed.

Maria shook her head. "No, you didn't. I wanted to come".

They smiled at each other, and Magdalena thought her sister had the most beautiful smile ever. No wonder the men were buzzing about their home in hopes to find favor with their father. She could never be envious of her little sister, for she loved her too much.

Maria was going to be next, the last of the girls to marry off. But, first, it was Magdalena's turn. It was settled. She was to marry Vincente Morino, a forty-nine year old bachelor, a stocky man with thick white hair and mustache, and a gruff voice that scared her away.  

When she cried out to her father to have compassion for her, pleaing that he reconsider, his anger burned within him. "You either marry this man or you don't live here anymore! You will need to fend for yourself if you don't! You will not bring shame onto this family!"

Magdalena would cry herself to sleep almost every night. She shared a bed with Maria, and her sister would just hold her to comfort her. They had the closest bond among all the siblings. Maria looked up to her sister with great admiration, as did her sister to her.    

All her hiding away of her money paid off. Magdalena had to earn her keep by doing sowing and caring after a neighbor, an elderly widow. Every week, her mother and father expected her to hand over all of her money to them, for the common good of the family, for their survival.

She used to feel guilty for holding a small portion of it back. They surely would not discover it if she did. She dared not to tell anyone , not even Maria for fear she would be discovered and punished.

But now she found a good reason to tell her.

Some of the townsfolk had relatives that had went to America to live. If they were able to write, they would tell of tales of working so hard, but because of it they were now living lives they had never expected, of more food, of more space, of more freedom.

Magdalena removed the floorboards from below her bed. She pulled out the lovely paper money and coins from within her small metal chest. She now believed that she had enough money for her passage, and perhaps enough for one more.

"Do you want to get married to one of these men?" she asked Maria one day . They sat upon their bed, the soft, afternoon light filtering through their lacy, beige curtains. The distant sound of children playing could be heard on the streets below.

Maria didn't know how to answer quite at first. "No", she eventually said. "I am too young!"

Magdalena grabbed her sister's hand and clasped hers together upon it. "Then come with me", she said. "I am going to America".

Maria's jaw dropped open, and she looked like she had seen a ghost. She shook her head in disagreement.

"Don't leave me!" she cried out, tears welling up in her eyes.

"I am not!" Magdalena assured her. "You go with me!"

But how could they possibly do it? Two impoverished girls from central Italy, from really nowhere when it came to maps and the greater world around them. Could they really leave?

"I have saved some of my money", Magdalena whispered, for fear someone could have returned back home.

"You did not!" Maria whispered back. Maria worked, too, caring after some children down the valley. She never had enough courage to hold back any of her money.

It was a terrifiying concept, for both of them. Maria was both excited and fearful. She had decided that she would trust her sister. Madgalena knew she loved her greatly, and that she always would. Maria knew Magdalena loved her. But her mother and father! Her sleepy, little town! She would probably never see any of them again. This made her hesitate.

So Magdalena gave her time to think about it.

In the meantime, Magdalena continued to hide away money. Her mother was busy sowing her the wedding dress that her defiant daughter vowed to herself that she would never wear.

Then one day Maria came up to her sister in the garden in the back of the house. "I decided that I am going with you", she said bravely. She looked at her sister with a mixture of bravery and fear. Her breaths were short, and her heart was beating quickly.

Magdalena, her basket filled with zucchini, was standing in disbelief. She looked upon her sister with a warm, slow-starting smile.

"Then you better take me with you!" a young voice said from behind a tree.  

Oh, no! Alberto! Their twelve year old brother appeared in the scene, coming from behind that old tree by the rose garden.

Fired burned in Magdalena's eyes.  Alberto, that little snake! That rat! It couldn't be!

Who do you think you are spying on us?" she hissed at him. "And you don't even know what I am talking about!"

"Oh, yes I do!" Alberto responded, smugly. "You have been hiding money from Mama and Papa! And now you are going to America!"

Did he try to steal her money? Did he get his *****, little hands on her precious stash? Magdalena wanted to choke him, her insolent little brother, the youngest of the children who always was too smart for his own good. He just stood there, his cocky smirk on his face like he was so triumphant.

"Keep your voice down, or I swear you will not lived to see thirteen!" Magdalena warned him.

"You think you are going to leave me here alone?" Alberto told his stunned sisters. "Don't take me, and I will tell them. Take me, and I won't say a word".

Magdalena felt the need to grab a large branch to rush at him and beat him senseless. But she just stood there, hands on her hips, glaring at him in a showdown of angry eyes.

Alberto stood his ground, and he would not budge an inch. "Alright", Magdalena said in a harsh whisper, "And do you expect me to pay your way? I cannot do it!"

Alberto laughed, his eyes dancing in amuzement. "Do you think you are the only one who hides money?"

Magdalena felt better now that her sister's color was coming back. The air on the boat was refreshing as she breathed it in deeply. Where was Alberto?

"Oh, there he is", Maria pointed out. She shook her head and laughed. He was busy talking away with a pretty, young girl. Always the lady's man, the sisters agreed, far beyond his young years.

So now there they were, the three of them upon this boat. Magdalena did not want to betray her parents. She felt that they might want to come to America, but maybe they would stay where they were at. Perhaps they felt that they were too old to make a fresh start, or they could just be too afraid.

Would they miss her? Magdalena often wondered. Would they hate her for what she did? If so, she prayed that they would forgive her. It was bad enough she had left, but now Maria and Alberto would be gone, too, and she was responsible for it.

"Mira! Mira!" a man shouted out in Spanish. Another person cried out, "Look at that! America! America!"  

All faces were now captivated. The closer they came, everyone watched intently, like they were at a glorious theater. A low murmer of different languages all came about at once.

It took a long time to reach close to this unknown land, this vast coastline of the New World. It was just such an amazing sight that nobody wanted to go down below deck, one of sugar maples, and cherry blossom trees, of elegant homes nestled in cliffs.

Magdalena saw buildings much taller than she had ever seen in Italy as America came closer and closer into her sights, as her boat was making its way into the New York Harbor. She stood by her sister and gripped her hand in excitement. This took quite a long time to recach that destination, and it felt like a dream.

Alberto eventually ran over to his sisters. "That is it! That is it! The Lady Liberty!"

All three stood there amazed, with all the other passengers rushing about on deck and standing to look. She was a very tall lady, quite a lady indeed! A petina, a bluish-green, she stood there proudly with her lantern raised to the skies. Magdalena thought she was the most lovely sight that she had seen so far on her journey, and she could not stop the tears from flowing down her face.

Maria squeezed her older sister's hand, with tears streaming down her face, as well. As they held each other tightly, all Maria and Magdalena could do was cry in their relief and their hope.  

Alberto waved wildly at the statue, as if she would wave back. Others laughed and cried. Many waved, too,  and many stood there completely silent and struck with awe.

They had made made it.  At last! Magdalena felt like she had made the right move, even though she did not have a clue what her life would hold out for her.

Even so, she felt like she had found herself a home.