I was born on a sweltering day in a desert city.
A silent landscape, unintelligible, like the sky holding its breath.
I am the fruit of young love, found under the shade of a palm tree.
My father melted into my mother, and rain drug the clouds across the horizon.
If my mother was a mountain, my father was a mountaineer, galvanized by earths rotation.
But soon they snapped like elastic on a baby, the marks of untimely decisions.
“Her name is Amarah Eden Hernandez”
For the first few years of my life, Spanish was my cardinal language.
“Siempre Contigo”
My great-grandmother would press my hand into her chest as if it were saving her life.
My mother knew no Spanish, so she spoke to me in gazes and smiles.
Her eyes were as boundless as the depths of the ocean, a lighthouse for those lost at sea.
Like a needle trailing the grooves of a spinning record, I’ve adhered to the inclinations of my mother.
Dreams of my mother dancing barefoot on melting ice
She falls through the cracks, the water too shallow to drown her.
Life spills into her toes, symmetry in her organs, with every breath she exhales zest
Grapefruits lining up for liquidation, a subtle sacrifice for forbidden fruit.
Long tangled hair not yet ready to be broken, whooping at the flavor of the air. t
There’s a break in the clouds and the sun is shining on her face, the patterns of orbits in the universe adamant for her eminence.
She dies in fraction, her flesh too human to persevere.
Her purpose too perpetual for earth.
She choreographs my words to the rhythm of her lips, and my actions follow closely.
Moonshine eyes from a long slumber.
So damn lyrical.
Backpack strapped and snapped,
senses precise,
intuition still intact.
Respect for untamed inconvenient adventures.
Like roads on a map,
adventure.
Windows down, sound blaring
adventure.
There you go,
appearing in my dreams again
knocking at my door with flowers
smiling straight at me,
here.
Dutifully dripping in simplicity.
Complacent.
But unpresuming,
gentle
and unpretentious.
I miss that.
Hey, I miss you
and the way you would scatter the clouds,
acres of sand with so many stars to count.
Some sky scrapping freedom you’ve acquired,
if i might say so myself.
Ma, I’m okay.
Like mimosas at brunch,
OKAY.
Like home-made tie dye socks,
OKAY.
Cause all that matters is that I knew you.
Finish your sentences, know you.
Blood type A positive, know you.
Poached eggs sewing threads
like pulling needles through my head,
it hurts to remember
cause I knew you,
the true view.
Manually adjusted exposure,
a light too bright too see.
I'm spent,
tired.
Three week loaf of bread, expired.
Ma, I gotta lay these river rocks down
I’ve been carrying them for miles.
Knots, cramps, spasms, miles.
I’m ready to be okay,
and even if i fall off stage,
hit the floor,
and bleed a tower of tears…
ahh sweet music.
My mania is no longer suggestive.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
-Frida Kahlo
Doctors squint at the sight of her setting,
an egoless eyeful barefooted and nude.
Sometimes resting her eyes on yours,
the small immensities of her bleak stares
dutifully discarding your prognosis.
Like charred logs embossing the soil,
eyelids flickering from the suddenness of fire.
They seemed so useless,
dud batteries not turning the lights on,
but rather putting them into eternal rest.
My shoulders were screaming like the mind of boiled tea,
why the fuck cant they fix her?
It irks my bones to reason with fate,
the scraps of my thoughts a meager meal of reason.