A Letter to the Visitor

I’m tired of playing a scientist.

The letters of all the questions, the guesses, experiments and conclusions stamp themselves into my brain.

It’s easy, the way my finger flips on the lights, letting the hum into my head as I tend to my beakers, muttering about potential solutions to the problems I can touch. 

It’s all I can do to not look down at the ink and graphite smudged against my hand while breathing in the air gone stale with fear and regret.

And I’m tired of masquerading as a mathematician.

The variables in all the equations, the theories, calculations and answers work their way into the inside of my eyelids. 

It’s automatic, counting the way I’ve learned to by jumping backwards from the hundreds, my fingers loose and limber from the sting of checking and rechecking what should be correct

It’s all I can muster to get it all right, because to be wrong by a literal fraction would surely mean weeks of embarrassment.

And I hate being a historian. 

The books and photographs and movie reels find their way into my heart in the night, arteries clogged with what should be ash, if not dust

It’s tragic, how important the information is in the anecdotes written by various hands, some of them my own. 

It’s all I can hope to ensure that the yellowed pages and faded time shape how I see the science, those abundant and precious scenarios, and come up with the formulas for the success that flits between my fingers. 

I will never stop.

With love to the scientists, mathematicians, and historians of the world, 

The Curator of the Museum

Golondrinas

Papá, you wrote this poem:

the beating of the hearts

broken the calm of the ocean that

feeds them and the howling o’ the

night banishes the cowardly eyes

in the melancholy they sink when

life rejects them at tender

sunset

we are thorned souls

far from reality

and hailed the cypresses

and the Golondrinas

Papá, you and I are golondrinas, swallows. I came to you, to perch on your balcony and lie in

your nest. I flew away at tender sunset. You were a thorned soul, a sacred heart, and you knew I would

return.

You held my mom’s hand. Rain came down and filled the streets. A downed powerline slipped

into a puddle, and when you and mom splashed through it, you were shocked from hand to hand.

You went back to your sisters and declared, “I am in love!”

They rolled their eyes, “Pshhh, ¡Arturo el romántico!”

I was born two years later.

In an old video, I sat on your lap and tried to eat dirt. Mom held the camera. “Arturo, watch out!”

she said.

“Ah, don’t worry, Megan. My mom let us play in dirt. It’s good for you.”

Meanwhile, I stuck my face in the mud.

I wonder if you already had symptoms when that video was taken. I wonder when mom knew.

Maybe you talked about the delusions and hallucinations—once the video camera was switched off and I

was put down to nap.

I know you tried to go to the U.S. to get treatment, but they caught you crossing the border as a

kid and wouldn’t let you in.

Right before my first birthday, mom made the decision to leave and take me with her. I think you

understood. You “weren’t very stable,” she said. Not stable enough to raise a child. I try to understand. I

wonder when you knew we were leaving. I know you always thought we might come back—your

golondrinas. You were not a coward. You never gave up. And new birds flew to your sill. Not many,

though. It was a lonely life, but your mother was there, and you had a few friends at Rock and Ron’s pub

and bar.

You sent me paintbrushes in the mail. You were an artist. You wrote to me, “Every day when i

wake up i say a little prayer on your sake and when i paint every sroke i intention it with love for you.”

When I was little, mom fielded the calls and emails. She tried to protect me, I think. In high school, she

let me talk to you on my own.

At fourteen, I was too young to understand your love. My attention span wasn’t long enough for

your love. I only responded to about half of your emails. This made you sad. I hope the happiness you felt

when you received an email outweighed the sadness from my silence. “Have I angered you, indi??” you

wrote. You hadn’t. I was just too self-absorbed to write back. I did like writing to you, but I thought you’d

be around forever.

And at fifteen, when you died, I was too young to understand what I had lost. Your mother, your

sisters, your brother, your cousins, they cried for you, and we painted your tomb.

I had flown back to you, but it was too late. Your face was a puffy mask. It didn’t look like a face.

But that was the first time I’d been beside your body since I left, so I looked even though I knew it was all

wrong. You were not there to see my return. So, I turned to your tomb with the rest of them.

“Art is for champions!” you wrote to me, “And you are a real good artist like me.” I painted your

tomb and stuck colored stones into the cement.

Your mother, my abuela, hugged me. “Mi Indi cariñoso, te amo.” You were not coming back, so

she held me. Her golondrina had flown away and was never coming back. I am my father’s son, a

golondrina to sit at my abuela’s side and hold her beating heart. And now that I am old enough to cry for

you, she holds me too. And we have your paintings on our walls and your brushes in our drawers.

I have folders full of your paintings.

“I hope you enjoy this little present,” you wrote, when you sent me a new creation.

But these are all echoes of our golondrina. I want you to come back to me. Please. Come back to

your son. I know what you felt now. I know the hopeless pain you felt to see the sun set. The birds could

blanket the skies and never comfort your thorned heart. I take out your brushes and my paints, and I sit

down. I call to you. Please, come back to me, my sweet golondrina, my Papá. And your face takes shape

on my paper, and your loving hands hold mine. And you tell me, “just let your self flow on the canvas and

touch at the last stroke as if it was the begining of the piece!!!!” And I paint your face, and for a moment

you come back to me, and I am a thorned soul, far from reality, and I hail the cypresses and the

golondrinas.

It's been a while

Can I hear you again? I'm missing

your voice… your words are food

for an empty stomach,

a vacuum, 

a person — like me.

It’s very likely that I dream too

much, for I never desire

to awaken; the sun may shine

but you gave me light, enough to 

warm a fire that can melt a 

glaciered heart…

But nowadays I'm burning, and

the clouds can't help but cry —

when these thoughts pollute 

their purity and blue fades into gray.

And when it pours, a flood of words

will lift a page from thirst,

and when I read I hear an echo 

coming from the depths of my throat. 

Once again I hear you, — how odd 

it sounds to my ears…for yes, I 

must admit that I forgot 

the sound of my voice.

Between Time

Between the stars is time, and within time

you came to love me.

Us youthful few, who amble along aimless

time, shan’t oppose

the prose which writes our rights, while wrongs

be wrought as

songs for the self.

Memories made for a mortal’s dreams;

how fortunate my eyes came to be

-- to see an angel who,

without wings, caused my heart to

carelessly spring.

Though two hands cannot press as one,

my heart has been touched by you.

No longer could meaning itself remain sober;

for between time came tragedy, and within tragedy

your soul sprung away from me.

A’lass she was, and was no more...

What else have I felt? -- if not the desire, to sing as

the choir, of my silent disdain.

I am here, yet still I wait for her to arrive.

Only in a mortal’s dreams...

You Are in a Hole

You are in a hole. There is no way out.

You could try clawing up, if you want.

Perhaps you might tear some dirt loose;

perhaps your nails bleed on cold stone.

You might as well yell your voice ragged,

but you cannot tell if your cries can reach the surface,

shrouded in shadow as it is,

and few ropes could reach this far down anyways.

You would prefer to be in a box,

with no yawning reminder of an elsewhere.

You might content yourself with memories of the sun.

Idiot. What do you know of sunlight?

You are in a hole. You could try to spin stories:

what you will do once freed, what your friends must be up to.

You fail, of course. The words of freedom and friendship

have no point of reference, here in the hole.

The longer you stay here

(What is ‘long?’ You lack minutes or months.)

the less you can recall of words altogether.

Tools of communication are vestigial,

here in the hole. They wither.

Suppose that, through some miracle —

gravity reverses for your sake —

you get out. Congratulations!

You were missed, met with a chorus of

“Where have you been?”

You answer, but it all seems rather silly now.

You are surrounded by loved ones,

not alone, in a hole. The hearth crackles

with welcoming warmth; the clammy hole

now seems very far away indeed.

After a moment of adjustment to the light

you forget that darkness weighs on ineffectual eyes.

You find it difficult to speak about silence.

Let’s say, when you keel over, you go to Heaven. Well done!

Dining on ambrosia, God at your side,

you peer down through the stratosphere at your family.

What the hell are they doing down there?

Your nectar-marinated tongue recoils,

imagining their dirt-born food. Their sublimest tones

grate against your ear, attuned to angelic chorus.

The hole, up here, has slipped your mind altogether.

After a bit God likely bores of you, casts you back to Samsara

As a baby, or a bunny, or a beetle, or a bird,

you are far more concerned with your body

than with the Kingdom of The Lord Your God.

So its echo fades. But on the off chance that you become

a worm, you might writhe your way back to the hole.

Maybe this time it will be a home.

The hole itself would not improve;

you would just have worse taste.

Grave in the Forest

Utter the words out loud

and so come the vines

born from the pollen carried by the butterflies in the stomach

trancing up through the throat

branching out across the face

thorns erupting from those smooth green stalks

digging into the eyes

tears of blood rain down

blinded by the want, blind to the need

The vines tangle around the body now

never strong enough to make a move

you will see no flowers here

leaves rustle in the wind

hedging their bets on a fall that never comes

by then the blood will be dried

the feeling a grave in the forest

And I tell myself it is all just chemistry

emotions, the growth of the vines, and the death of everything

no one has ever been so wrong.

50°00′56′′N 02°41′51′′E

when i died, i tried to take the sky with me

i remember the way it felt, sharp and bright

on the scraped skin of my cheek

but when i tried to grab it, i couldn't reach

tired arms ricocheting

off the copper, stiff in the air

i put my wrists to my ribs, told myself

if i imagined hard enough

i could turn bones into silt

ask the sky to feed them

until petals broke through,

blood-red sprigs molting

to rageful mauve

let them devour, i thought

i would rather be nothing

if i cannot keep the sky—

i do not want the world

to keep my bones

Open Letter

to body,

standing by the kitchen countertop at nine pm on a Saturday:

enough is sufficient.

we know fullness

little child we wandered distracted from the dining room table

—household cat curled up in the sunlight—

we know. and yet like many we are still searching

this year’s salvation is not in the bottom of a wine glass but in the empty pint of sugar-free ice cream

it is hidden in the back of the refrigerator, and we are still standing there with the door wide open 

we have memorized the contents but we will never tire of looking.

to body:

it will be forthcoming. there is honey in the rock for all mom’s children

food again for breakfast

someday we will break the habit of licking our plate clean

there is always surplus.

so we learned frugality in the space between the dinner table and the empty porcelain

serving dishes and dished out portions

spare ribs and turkey thigh gaps and extra lean cheekbones.

now body is fighting. body is packing flesh like tissue paper on our thin gift-wrapped skeleton

body scrabbles for the dirty plates and abandoned leftovers

body waits crouched under the veneer of civilization for any scraps that it knows might fall

body is still young. we are teaching it not to hide from strangers

not to cower under the covers

but body learns slow. body doesn’t know we are no longer fighting

body doesn’t know it is no longer starving

body just hasn’t quite learned that now, finally, it can come out and play.