Nostalgias (no es el nombre real)

Tonight, in the restaurant’s
dim glow, your essence unfolds
before my eyes. You are only three
years old, and three feet tall.

Visiting friends and family share
their fortunes. You stand up on
your seat, hold the tiny paper in your
tiny hand, and resolutely read:

God was put in jail tonight.
Our little Nietzsche. Another scrap:
Friends are a very good thing.
Building bridges from bland dessert.

Our dazzled cheers. Your reddening
cheeks. You decline to continue
translating our fates, wise to quit
such an undeserving audience.

I envision the teen in you. A curious
intellectual. A sensitive heart.
Trusting your own music, your own shine.
The light within us too, a bit brighter.

Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

Nana’s Teachings

You initiated me in the alchemy of laundering
during my breaks from hopscotch on our Spanish patio tiles.

I learned how best to remove stains while you, bent over
the oversized granite sink, told me about suds and how to break them.

Then you performed the intricate ceremony of unwrapping
those brilliant blue softener cubes, enticing as bonbons in shop windows.

For the grand finale, you hung my dresses and dirtied sheets
to dry and dance with the winds. I was too small to help you.

Too delighted by the smallest things.

The green light in your eyes empowering me to tiptoe inside
the wiry chicken house and collect newly laid eggs.

I cradled the bounty safely between cupped little hands.
My cheeks burned with self-admiration, triumph.

Yolks extracted, beaten. Alcohol and sugar. Vermouth.
Your next alchemy: a sweet orange foamy concoction

you let me sip, so slowly, as I would a latte today.

A discarded bookcase converted into a garden. Offerings:
balled-up roly polies, dirtied fingernails, divine strawberries grown overnight

that you let me pick. Such pride. Grown-upness.

I was the caretaker of those fragrant plants
you called sweet basil, thyme, rosemary.

Under your vigilant eye, I learned to curb
my temptation to touch those forbidden
miniature green hot peppers that turned fiery red

in the spring. They grew upside down
like candles on Christmas trees. So silky in my hands,

like the last time I touched your cheek.

Dying All Over Again

I have to borrow air
to wrap up the eulogy.
Wilted, I wonder,
shall I surrender?

Outside
raging winds
tear into trees.
Old and sturdy,
they resist this
call of war.
They withstand.

I turn away from the office
window, sinking deep into
the familiar green couch.
My heart swells. His absence.

The night before his death,
he thanked me for sharing
my full, beautiful, ugly self.
A startling unity.

Silence makes more sense
in the session now.
Nothing else does.
The doctor and I know
it is best not to ruin
with words such raw
moments of truth.

Our session is over, for me.
I collect the pieces of myself.
One by one.
I’m still saying nothing.
Eyes not yet fully open,
I hold my head with both hands,
unblur my vision.

The doctor is still here.
The window still frames the trees.
A dog barks.
Bit by bit I approach the exit.
Do I really want to leave?

I hurry home to
a now-empty bed,
sleep, my heart alone.
Awake to a new sun.

Archived, But Not Lost

You,
young hands grown tired,
my reason to live, my all,
shedding this sensual existence.

You,
my tireless earth-wanderer,
now in the otherworld,
roaming the ether. Boundless. Peaceful.

Me,
the me you knew,
forever filed. Archived. But not lost.
Without your mirroring eyes, I couldn’t linger.

My world, still swirling.
Up is down. Whole is half.
And the future?
The future is achingly behind.

Yearning

This urgent stirring, ascending.
Eyes closed, my lips must
seek out the soul in yours.
Nibbling softly, breathing them in.
Ours, a voracious sweetness.

Then calm.

Inside our wrapped arms we linger
in a tantric trance ignoring arousal,
harnessing our energy until

you pull my hair, bite my neck.
Your infractions suggest a new urgency.
Clothes cast off. Stoking the flame.

You pick me up and flatten me
against strange surfaces. I pin you
down, trace each contour of your face,

taste your geography,

claim your oceanic skin as mine.
Turning and positioning us, you are
my body’s choreographer. Our love-
making is always new, you say.

After these loving, lustful words, muddled
in sweat and sticky sheets. After bliss.
I lick chocolate ice cream from your
eager, waiting fingers.

So Many Lost Keys

I spent most of my day looking for things when he was alive. The dirty socks
mistakenly tossed in the toilet. A funny kind of forgetting. So many lost keys. Unread books, spines still uncracked. Unclosed drawers overflowing with underwear.

Memory: a quilt, patches of ill-fitting moments. Six million dispossessed, tortured, their arms branded. Sinister ovens, chimneys spitting out human smoke. Thirty thousand abducted to be tortured and executed, women raped in basements. Thrown from planes bound in sheets, weighted by bricks, dropping down onto the Rio de la Plata. Babies yanked from wombs to be gifted to Generals. Germany and Argentina at their worst. Now a virus Made In China eating human lungs. We are no longer asking survival questions. To the mirror: who will I be when this is over?

Now, he, in too many ways gone. I spend my days losing keys, phones, leaving my five pairs of glasses in strange places. I repeat I’m sorry, I can’t touch you. I can’t hold you. But to whom? Those eerie post-war empty streets? My neighbors, my family? I better keep picking up these dirty clothes around the house. Make some noise to break this eternal silence. My heart misses him hating this apocalypse.