Gun simile
Rigoberto describes one memory where his family members were shooting guns. He didn't feel comfortable, and "kept quiet, wishing that somehow I would become invisible." After his cousins used the gun successfully, it was Rigoberto's turn, and he "sensed the enthusiasm plummet." He fails miserably, and when he hands over his he uses a simile to describe how he: "relinquished the rifle and it felt like I had just handed over whatever it was that my father had wanted me to be."
The mariposa
The mariposa is used as a metaphor for the transition that gay men undergo when they reclaim their own narrative. Rigoberto explains: "Mariposa may come across as an obvious symbol or image with the caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation paralleling a young man's coming out of the closet/cocoon, but the trope can be articulated through a more emotionally charged language: the transformation is actually a transition. From one creature is born a different living being that bears the memory of its past life in its genes.... the freedom of inhabiting a second manifestation of the self also represents a second chance at life.
Library book
Rigoberto recalls going to the library and getting a book called A Christmas Memory, "hardbound and in a little handy dandy box, like a Christmas gift." Here, he uses a simile to describe how the gift was wrapped, and what it looked like.
