For my Mother

I see you on the liminal green field, where Dad said goodbye to everyone he loved. I always feared growing taller than you, but I wasn’t expecting you to be a baby here. Your Abuelita Maria wanted you born in Ecuador, and your ears pierced with strings of pearls. Here, it’s my turn to brush through your fine hair, nourish your imagination with sunshine and cinnamon, and sing you lullabies about your favorite dessert*:

Arroz con leche

quiero soñar*

de una infancia

que te alegrará.

Last time I ate arroz con leche hot and straight from the pot, just how you like it, I saw your smiling face, so sure and clear that the past swam by in cool waterfalls—like your advice, like your hugs. Everything done so I could be safe and embraced by all. And all at once, I went from calling you “mom” to “mamá.”

*Rice Pudding

*The Spanish text in this poem is from a nursery rhyme and game common in Latin America called Arroz con Leche. The original song is about finding a suitable wife, and the original lyrics of the first verse are as follows: “Arroz con leche / Me quiero casar / Con una señorita / que sepa coser,” which can be translated as follows: “Rice Pudding / I want to marry / a woman / who knows how to sew.” The lyrics included in this poem were revised by me, and can be translated as follows: “Rice Pudding / I want to dream / of a childhood / that makes you happy.”

My father’s ashes are buried across boundaries.

In/subordination, I took on his image.

They say the oldest daughter always looks like the father,

but this is something else entirely. A spitting,

splitting image.

I granulated my own grown face into specks fine as cornmeal.

I dreamed of clumping everything back together seamlessly,

until sticky enough to cling to the cool curvature of pearl bowls.

For now, I reside in the heat of my blood, dripping

down, palms fumbling over shattered beach glass.

Now, behold this jagged collage of history I formed by memory

the shape of your face and lo it is stained with blasphemy.