What Lies Under Blue  

I spend a whole summer swimming 
                 in bluebonnet fields.
Every time a breeze dances through each stem, 
                 the field speaks. 
Except I don’t know where the sentence begins or ends. 
                 The truth is I haven’t felt joy in 253 days. 
I’m here because I’m relearning how to live. 
                 I see shapes in words when I read them 
but I don’t remember how a word is used. 
                 In this field I am nothing more than wallpaper. 
I want to be alone but I don’t want to feel lonely. 
                 I wonder if this field feels joy too. 
My mouth is a shovel, I dig to know 
                 What lies under this thick blue. 
All I find are roots. I ask, What happens after death?
                 There is no answer. Maybe there is no beginning or ending.
Maybe at the end of it all we forget the word grief ever existed 
                 & our bodies compress & erupt into another field of blue.  

 

 

Running Through Mesquite Trees  

Its June, I run through Abuelo’s Mexican fields 
                 the sun opens my pores,
                                   it asks for the water inside me to pour out.
                                                   I’m twelve, I’m lost, & when my body rubs
                                                                   against the leaves of Mesquite trees, I sound
                                                                                        like crisp rain. Abuelo is dead.
Abuela has burned all the photos in the house, 
                  all his clothes, reminding her of his
                                                once existence. These fields are
                                                                all what is left of him. The various shades of green
from the trees remind me of the water 
                 I once swam in a lake in Texas. How I thought
                                 water is supposed to be clear, not shaded. Maybe
                                                  Abuela sees grief as this murky water. Each of these
                                                                 trees will live to be over one hundred years. Abuelo
never told me they will outlive me. 
                 For the longest time, I thought the silence around
                                 Abuelo’s death was caused by Abuela’s mouth.
                                                Now, I see even language fails when a name is spoken.
                                                               Years later, I’ll find myself again running through
                                                                               Mesquite trees when I miss Abuelo.
Water will slide down my face, 
                 I won’t sound like rainfall. This time I’ll sound
                                 like the fire Abuela lit all those decades ago—  

 

 

Migrational Humor
          After Transnational Humor by Hazem Fahmy  

The joke—  

                Apá left his country to be in a country where there’s no traces of his existence, where
dreams taste of metal & smell of sulfur, where this country tells him, Hold your scream, 

                whenever he has dreams of his brother drowning, where
                                      32 years later Apá still waits in a line to one day hold
                a Green Card with the word                       RESIDENT       printed above his face; 

Where— Amá buries a picture of her father under jacaranda trees because this is the closest thing
she’ll have of her father at his funeral, where 

                  the doctor prescribers her Ambien again so she can visit her country in her sleep, where
Amá finally meets me in El Paso at the top of mountains to tell me

                                                 Mira, that’s my country!
                                 Across the border, over there, verdad que se mira bonita?

The joke being:
                                                 Apá tells me: Échale ganas, porque estamos bendecidos. 

              While Amá says: Todo lo que hagas, ponle corazón. 

When I tell them: Aren’t you tired of this country? They laugh.  

                 We laugh.
                                                 You laugh.  

                                                                              This country laughs—  

                                                                              & my parents hold their bellies & fold from laughter &  

                                                                                             fold & fold &  

                                                                                             fold like they did with their dreams.  

 

 

A Series of Forgotten Photographs:

Corpus Christi Beach Family Outing — 1993

 

 

Amá Takes a Picture of Me Sitting in Front of Our First Desktop Computer & at Night I Look Up Men on Craigslist — 2008

 

 

My Ex-Boyfriend & I on Top of Transmountain — 2015