I was nineteen when you stopped by the chic boutique where I worked on the Hill to deliver curated music cassette tapes. You carefully titled each song: “You’ve Got a Friend” by JamesTayler, “You Fill Up My Senses” by John Denver,“December” by George Winston, and “Drive All Night” by Bruce Springsteen. Later, with the windows rolled down, we would blast the volume, singing at the top of our lungs; you told me how you loved my voice. Later, our voices blended beautifully, and I learned to sing harmony against your melody.

Dear unhoused man sitting on my front lawn, 


When you see your mother, 

please tell her I fed you homemade soup.

Warm lentils with vegetables in a porcelain bowl

with a silver spoon.



Tell her I touched your arm

looked into your scabbed grey face

and when our eyes met

you cried with gratitude.


Tell her that under your breath

you whispered

Thank you

and that you put your dishes neatly on my front stairs,

leaving me a bicycle wheel as a gift.



Tell her that she raised a gentleman.

It’s easy to feed you

oatmeal with apples

warm in the morning

with a sprinkle of cinnamon

a lava river of honey

bringing in the sweetness

of a new day.

I never put you down, the days you were mine. Like a baby bird, you cooed while I hummed into the crook of your neck. While nursing, your gaze was absolute. When your birth mother changed her mind, I swaddled you into a blanket smelling of milk and powder and relinquished you. I heard she changed your name, kept your first weeks a secret. You are twenty, and I wonder: Are you the son your mother dreamed of? If you are reading this now, I wanted you to know that I never put you down the days you were mine.

I would like to hum for you 
a little intermezzo
a few brief measures 
melodywhispering 
in your ear 
fingers trilling 
vibrating 
a moment of quiet 
in between 
the living

What were you wearing
La Llorona, as you walked
the banks of the Guadalupe,
commanding the water to rise
before the sun had a moment
to shed light on your terror?

How quietly you slipped in
and swallowed our daughters
while they dreamed
of popsicles, care packages,
friendship circles,
and coming home.

We do not consent.
You are not absolved.

Instead, we cast a spell upon you.
We reclaim our children—
as Marigolds, Jasmine, and Lotus,
garlands of petals.

Floating.
Risen.

Born again,
and coming home.

When I am gone,
bury me high on the hills
with los abuelos y las abuelas.

Build me a stucco mausoleum
and paint it blue.
Carve me an arched window
so the sun
and moonlight
can find the space
where I rest,
near the orange marigolds
you place
by my grave.

Leave me angel statues,
crimson plastic flowers,
photographs of when I was
young.

Trinkets—beads and shells,
soft round stones
from the ocean.

Visit me here,
and I will listen
to your stories.

Shhh…
I am not
as far away
as it seems.

     I was four years old when you first placed the necklace in my outstretched palms. My fingers were too small to contain the tiny knots holding the luminescent beads. From hand to hand, I would spill the fountain from one hand to the next. 
“One day, these will be yours!” you sang as you placed the pearls around my neck—a small ritual between Grandmother and Granddaughter. When you died, we discovered that you told my sisters the same. No one knows what happened to the pearls but when I close my eyes, I can still see just you and me in the reflection, a portrait of good intention.

You won't believe me 
that while walking
in the rainforest 
white butterflies 
swooned in front of me 
papier-mâché wings,
drawing me forward 
to a path covered 
with swirling
pink bugambilia,
little paper lanterns
guiding the way 
to Buddha sitting
covered with beads, and shells 
bracelets and rings, 
birds reveling,
Inviting me to sit
and rest 
for just awhile.
You won't believe me
but it is true.  

We are the poets
who started writing in kindergarten
and never stopped.

We learned that poems don’t have to rhyme
or start with roses are red, violets are blue,
and had teachers who cooed,
write, write, write.

We sketched love poems
into little flowery journals
and poured our noticings freely,
with curly cursive handwriting

We are the poets
who took creative writing in college,
studied Joy Harjo, Erica Jong,
Adrienne Rich and Sharon Olds.

We read Virginia Woolf,
while everyone sun-bathed in the quad
and dreamed of a room of one’s own.
When our babies were little,
they became our projects—
nursing, reading, watching them grow.

We jotted down words from time to time,
and are not sure
where those scrap papers ended up.

We are older now,
and have caught our breath.

We have time to pick up our pens,
to prune
our words,
like an English rose bush
curating each bloom
early in the morning,
when no one is awake.

I want to write about loss,
the kind that sweeps
us off our feet
and leaves us gasping—
loss of home, loss of friends,
marriages, miscarriages,
losses to misunderstandings.

I want to write about faith,
the kind that when you swallow
it dances through your body,
Spirit growing and bursting,
and if we are lucky,
settles in
like a kitten,
sleeping and purring
near our hearts
for a long nap.

You know,
last night was the longest night of the year—
when darkness hovers
until the sun rises,
rises, blanketing the trees,
the ocean,
with the color of rose.

In this transition from light to dark,
the caciques go mad,
and the roosters reminds us
that it is time to get up.

I want you to wake up
and taste oranges and strawberries.

I want to tell you
that your life is no different
than writing a song,
that you are a baby,
just being born,
that you are no different than
a peony, whose petals
loosen and unfurl,
opening to all that is
possible 
and impossible

On Wednesday,

you were here

drinking coffee at my table,

with your pinky just so—

sipping and smiling.


Today is Saturday,

and you are not here,

not in my kitchen,

not on this earth.


Your last breath,

a sigh,

between

my sleeping

and waking,


I feel you near, my mother


with your pinky just so,

drinking coffee

at my table.

So good that it snowed
Branches bearing the burden
Of my heavy heart

I am a barefoot girl
running through the blue grass,
wet with dew.

The humid Kentucky air
keeps the hair around my forehead damp,
I don’t notice the tiny sweat dripping
because I am running.

No one is watching,
and I am reaching,
pulling from thick air fireflies
and stashing them in Grandmommy’s glass canning jars.

One, two, three,
until the jar is filled with a bioluminescence glow.

It is at this moment that I am sure.
No, I am positive there is a God.

Stumbling home with the lid on tight,
I drift into a summer slumber
accompanied by thousands of cicadas,
only to awaken
to a glass coffin
filled with delicate, harmless, extinguished fireflies.