Summary: Part II: And the Word Was Made Flesh [Smoke Parks — The Day]

Aman and Xiomara visit the smoke park on Friday. Aman puts an earbud in her ear, and they listen to an album. Walking back to the train, Xiomara is thankful for a large city of people to “hide me.” She decided long ago that Twin is the only boy she’ll love because she doesn’t want a “converted man-whore” like her father or a “pretty boy.” Besides, Twin is the best boy she knows, even if he’s the worst twin.

Twin is a terrible twin, Xiomara reflects, because he’s skinny and doesn’t try to look cool. He doesn’t uphold the male Dominican stereotype—he can’t dance, prefers reading over baseball, and hates to fight. Xiomara is his protector. Twin is a brilliant student, skipped a grade, and goes to a “genius” high school, so Xiomara can’t copy his homework. Xiomara says he’s an “award-winning bound book” while she’s loose pages. Twin doesn’t have “twin intuition” and is oblivious when Xiomara needs help. This day, he tells her something inside her has “shifted.” She thinks the whole world looks different, but before she can say so, he asks if maybe it’s just her menstrual cycle.

Xiomara gets a text from Aman after Mass, where she once again doesn’t take Communion. As Mami scolds her, she texts that she liked the Kendrick Lamar album and wants to listen to something else together. Aman makes poems build inside Xiomara. She’s been given “metaphor Legos” and waits for someone to knock them over. No one at home notices as she recites her poems “like a prayer.” Ms. Galiano asks her about joining the poetry club again, but Xiomara pretends she forgot.

In biology, she passes notes with Aman, feeling like her body is a shaken soda bottle ready to pop. Aman asks if she’s ever dated anyone at school, and Xiomara tells him the boys there aren’t cute enough for her. She tells him she’s still deciding if he’s cute. At confirmation class, Xiomara wants to tell Caridad that if Aman were a poem, he’d be a “witty punch line” written on a brown paper bag. Mami tells Xiomara she saw her talking to Caridad during class and lectures her about staying focused on God. Xiomara breaks out in a sweat, and her tongue swells with everything she can’t say.

Ms. Galiano leaves Xiomara a note on her assignment that tells her the assignment was poetic and encourages her to come to poetry club. This makes Xiomara feel like “a bright light lit up inside me,” but she crumples the note. Poetry club feels like “Eve’s apple”—a temptation. Aman and Xiomara meet, but instead of music he asks her to read him a poem. Though she feels naked, she reads a poem about Papi. He says it makes him think of his mother being gone. She asks about his mom, and he sits quietly for a moment. He says his mother was supposed to come to the United States with him, but she didn’t. She used to call daily, but now only does on his birthday. He explains, “Sometimes the best way to love someone is to let them go.” Aman and Xiomara walk together, holding hands, instead of riding the train.

October comes. Aman and Xiomara continue to walk together after school, but she’s too shy to do more, though she wants to. Aman never pressures her. At church, Xiomara still spits out her wafer. Confirmation class is torture. She pretends to listen, but one day she asks questions when Father Sean says Eve’s story is a parable about temptation. Xiomara says she wonders if the story is a metaphor and wonders why God gave Eve curiosity if he didn’t want her to use it. Father Sean asks her to talk after class. Caridad warns that Xiomara will be in trouble if Mami hears about this. Father Sean asks if she wants to discuss something other than Eve. He encourages her to talk with Mami but doesn’t answer the questions she asked. Xiomara notices a picture of him boxing and asks about it. Father Sean tells her, “Not every fight can be fought with gloves.” She leaves after telling him she won’t ask about Eve again.

For her rough draft of Assignment 2, last paragraph of her biography, Xiomara writes about taking stereotypes about herself and putting them in a “chokehold.” She wants to be remembered as a warrior. In the final draft of the assignment, she writes about becoming a writer who helps first-generation teens talk to their parents about dating and going to college. In this imagined future, she and Twin live near each other in Harlem, and she buys her parents a home in the Dominican Republic.

Xiomara and Aman hold hands inside their desk. His fingers “light[ing] a match” in her body. Xiomara masturbates that night, feeling both release and shame. Aman asks Xiomara if she goes to church, and she tells him that she goes with her mom but that she’s really into poetry. She says she’d like to be “the Poet X.” In class, she learns that heat moves through some things better than others and decides that a boy may be the best conductor. Twin doesn’t ask about who she’s texting all the time, but she doesn’t ask him who he’s texting either. The next morning, they each ask who the other is smiling about. They make plans with Caridad to watch a scary movie on Halloween.

In the smoke park, Aman asks Xiomara if she’s ever smoked weed. He says Drake is better stoned, but he doesn’t pressure her. Being close to Aman makes her feel happy. When a fire alarm goes off in biology, Xiomara suggests cutting class. When Aman says he didn’t know she liked Drake that much, she tells him it’s not Drake she cares about.

Analysis: Part II: And the Word Was Made Flesh [Smoke Parks – The Day]

Xiomara begins to explore her feelings of loneliness and feeling misunderstood during this section. In telling all the ways that Twin is bad at being a twin, she really expresses the longing for connection, though the reader can see that perhaps Twin understands her more deeply than she realizes. Xiomara begins to take her romantic life into her own hands, becoming more forward with Aman as they spend time together. Xiomara’s coming-of-age accelerates as she exerts her independence and seeks connection. This also coincides with her becoming a more confident writer and exploring how poetry might help her feel more understood.

This part of The Poet X also shows Xiomara’s increasing rejection of religion. Her refusal to swallow the host coincides with her deepening her relationship with Aman, both rebellious acts against religion in general and her mother in specific. Religion represents Xiomara’s debt to God and the community, exactly the opposite of Xiomara’s desires. While Xiomara believes her transformation must be visible and worries that Twin and Mami will be able to tell, they don’t notice. However, Ms. Galiano does notice and continues to quietly encourage her, especially through her writing. This underscores the connection Xiomara feels with Ms. Galiano, often missing from her relationship with her family.

This section of the text focuses on temptation, using Eve and the apple as metaphors for Xiomara’s own temptation. She compares poetry to the forbidden fruit, represented by the fact that poetry club happens at the same time as confirmation class. But the temptation is more than just a conflict in schedule. Poetry represents independent thought about religion, sexuality, and the world. Xiomara knows that by opening herself up to this, she will be going against all she has been taught, a prospect that both excites and terrifies her.