Clap When You Land

At this point, we have no reason to hope but I can’t say the words because then it will become real.

Of all the ways it could end it ends not with us in the sky or the water, but together on solid earth safely grounded.

I was my mother’s gift to the sun of her life. She revolved around my father, the classic distant satellite that came close enough to eclipse her once a year.

To be from this barrio is to be made of this earth & clay:

I want to hate this dead woman. For the way even talking about her twists up my mother’s face. This dead woman, who made my father visit, & have a child, & board a plane that fell into the ocean. I am slow to put the pieces together. I want to hate a dead woman, & her daughter who most likely hates me for making my father leave her in t

Papi learned to swim in water that wanted to kill him. That ocean can’t be so different; shouldn’t be any different. If any man could take a hard dive & come up breathing, it should be one who had practiced for just that his entire life.

Such a funny phrase, pay respects. As if suffering is a debt that can be eased by a hug & a head nod.

A truth you did not want to know can rot & grow mold in the pit of your stomach, can sour every taste you’ve ever had, can cast a stench so bad you forget you’ve ever known a sweet thing.

So he created a theater of his life & got lost in all the different roles he had to play.”