slides down to the floor
with her head in her hands, & I watch
as the rollers slip free one by one, as her body shakes
& she unravels. I do not slide down to join her.
Instead, I put my arms underneath hers,
help her up to her feet & into her bedroom.
When the phone begins ringing
I answer & murmur to family.
I take charge where no one else can.
Last summer, when I learned my father’s secret,
it was like bank-style gates descended on my tongue:
no words could escape. Those words I learned
must be protected at all cost. Even from my family.
Papi thought my silence was because of chess.
Because I was angry at his disapproval.
He never once imagined that my silence
was my disappointment in him. At what I’d found.
But although I felt he’d become a stranger,
I never stopped being my parents’ steady daughter.
Who did her chores & bothered no one.
Even now, that is not a habit I know how to break.
I take down the trash. I microwave the leftovers.
I wrap myself tight around the feelings I cannot share,
an unopened present, a gift no one wants.
Camino Yahaira
One Day After
The day after the crash,
but with still no deaths confirmed,
my friend Carline comes by before work,
hugs me tightly, her swollen belly between us,
but I quickly pull away.
I am afraid that I would break her.
Am afraid that I would break.
She is quiet. Holds my hand in hers. Says God
will see me through. Carline has lost aunts & uncles
& cousins & knows about mourning,
but she still has both parents at home. & so,
I take her comfort without yelling
that she Does. Not. Understand.
When her phone buzzes, she quickly releases
my hand on a curse. I know without her telling me
it’s her manager at the resort, wondering where she is.
When she leaves, Tía sits in front of the TV
& Don Mateo comes over, hat in his hands, & the phone rings, &
even Vira Lata, usually mellow, howls at our gate.
Everyone in these streets knew Papi:
The hustlers he gave money to keep an eye on me,
the colmado owners & fruit-cart guys who held our tab,
the folks Tía has been a curandera to, healing their babies.
The neighbor women send pastelones & papayas,
& men stop by to offer care in the form of labor & prayer.
Papi was gone three-fourths of each year but kept his ear
pressed to the ground all three hundred sixty-five days.
& so, like grains of rice in boiling water,
the crowd outside our little teal house expands.
People stand there in shorts & caps,
in thong sandals, the viejos held up by their bastones,
they shuffle onto the balcón,
they wrap their fingers around the barred fence,
they watch & wait & watch & wait an unrehearsed vigil.
& they pray& I try not to suffocate
under all the eyes that seem to be expecting
me to tear myself out of my skin.
We have the nicest house in the barrio
because Papi spent money to make it so.
He wanted to move us, but Tía refused
to leave the neighborhood she knows & serves.
So instead, Papi got us fat iron locks,
running water, & a working bathroom we don’t have to share.
We have humming air conditioners,
a large refrigerator, & a small microwave.
A generator para cuando se va la luz,
the latter setting us apart;
when the daily power outages happen
& the whole hood goes dark,
we are one of the few homes with our lights still on.
But it feels like for the first time,
our house is the one that’s gone dim.
Our house is squat, with two bedrooms,
a kitchen & comedor.
A small patio in the backyard where we hold
prayer circles & parties.
Our floors are not dirt. But tiled recently,
& always mopped clean.
We have a TV in the living room,
& Wi-Fi, & so many small luxuries
Papi’s US sweat provided.
But the best thing about our house
is that it’s a three-minute walk from the beach.
Which isn’t always lucky when the water rises,
but it has saved my life on the many days
when I need a reminder the world is bigger
than the one I know, & its currents are always moving;
when I need a reminder
there is a life for me beyond the water
& that one day I will not be left behind.
My bathing suit is a red-hot color,
like the one from that old North American show Baywatch?
Not as low cut. Unfortunately.
I sneak out of the house through the back
& avoid the well-meaning people out front,
whose questions & condolences I want to swat.
From the back road, it’s a straight shot to the water’s edge.
Even though I snuck out from the back, Vira Lata is soon
dogging my feet.
I pass a couple of houses & two bar fronts
where men play dominoes & sip lukewarm beer.
This is the edge of our neighborhood.
El Cero sits outside one bar in his blue shorts,
his eyes following me as I approach. He is a man
somewhere older than me but younger than Papi,
& I’ve known that from the moment I turned thirteen
Papi paid El Cero a yearly fee to leave me alone.
But the last few months, I’ve felt his eyes on my back.
Little things, like him now hanging outside my bus stop.
Or strolling more often on the beach. Carline even told me
she saw him at the resort once & he asked about me.
I keep my eyes on the road as I walk past.
I hunch myself invisible. & then my favorite sight:
the thicket of trees, & small path through them,
then the embankment of well-worn dirt
that gives way to sun-bleached sand.
This nook is bookended by jagged cliffs on one side—
that’s where the chamaquitos dive—& on the other is the
stone wall that separates the neighborhood from the resort
where Carline works.
I avoid the cliff; I am not here to leap & flip.
I am here because I need the current, moving & steady
& never the same twice. Rolling clear & blue right where I left it.
My small oasis. Papi used to call it Camino’s Playa.
The water-babble rushes my worst thoughts quiet.
& I peel my denim shorts off, wade in, slicing through
as if by doing this I could cut to strips my breaking heart.
Swimming might be the closest to flying
a human being can get. There is something
about your body displacing water
in order to propel through space that makes you feel
Godtouched. That makes me understand evolution,
that we really must have crawled up from the sea.
My life’s passions
are all about water breaking, new life making,