and i carry your unbelonging on my back like a loyal daughter
pray someday
You
Me
someone
will recognize
you, me, us
Who we are
and I reflect on all the ways
i gave myself up
to bear your weight
I walked for so long
without a sense of me
only echoes
whispers
traces
with each step
against my neck you’d breathe and speak:
chingona
don’t cry don’t bleed
smile pretty
chingona
stifle your past, it’s a weakness.
chingona
these are the conditions of ‘freedom.’
chingona
You say to me
And I wonder how things would be different
If you’d accepted who you are
Chingona
you say to me
and I think of your mother, your father
Child of the
The gray:
something both and neither
parting with your shame
i’ll carry this no longer
i love you
as in:
I love all of who I am
what we’ve lost
who we are.
the courage you never had
the love you never received
i call forward and grieve
The failed attachment to a mother
whose womb uprooted
grasped for soil; safety
mere men cannot offer
and with this resentment
she spoon fed
her sons
living reminders
only land understands
the ways the tether remains
no matter how you seek to deny or destruct it
only land understands
to forfeit, to disappear your roots
is to sever vital connection
to wither slowly
to thirst incessantly
to be devoured by your own hunger
incompleteness;
whiteness:
Not even sure what’s missing
Only that something is gone
phantom limbs
haunted
reach, hum, throb
if you listen
this wound is a song
Te Rezo
In bloody tongues
This is for Nina
This is for Tata
This is for Tia, Tio
and for Tina.
this is for me.
this is for my father: