America, I hear, as in American, American dream. America—and a portion of the continent vanishes. America: the name slips out my mouth like a sticky cherry pit. America, I say again, and this time I feel as if I’ve plucked a geranium from Alejandra’s eyes, the park in Trujillo, where we used to play hide-and-seek. Years ago, I learned America was a word coined centuries earlier by someone not from America, after an Italian explorer who circled the shadows of America’s earthen body, the earliest use of America being almost ten thousand years after la papa—the potato—was replanted over and over and weaned off its venom by hands often made invisible by America. Reader, I can’t say America without noticing its first button is in the wrong hole.
(Dis)ambiguation