roosters crow as the sun rises
over mountains. fans blast,
but sweat still pebbles
everyone’s brow.
pots and pans clank as abuela
makes breakfast.
tíos y primos y primas y tías
slink down the hall—
the gold chains around their necks
swaying with every step,
soles of their feet black
from the concrete floor.
plates are passed around,
huevos, frijoles con queso, and tortillas
piled on like the hills of tattered Nikes
in the backyard by the chicken coop.
abuela, with a skillet in hand, asks
if anyone wants more—
before we’ve taken a third bite,
before she’s even fixed her own.
i’ve often wondered how someone can have
nothing yet still find ways to give.
how they hold faith between their teeth
like the last of flesh on bone—
choose forgiveness as though God
will water the land on which their words spill.
this language, this burdening of the body
with weight that is not your own
feels foreign upon my tongue. how i’ve watched
my mother’s limbs grow weak, her spine stiff
from bending to their will.
when does blood become too thick to navigate.
a sea of bodies whose history hides
in every fold. if only i could make sense of the truths
that lie within each grain
of salt against skin, then maybe
this legacy would shoulder more than my mother’s curls
and home would not just be a place
i find by way of map after all this time.
after breakfast, my brothers and i gather around
the tv, slumped together with our primos—
our backs soaking the sofa as we play FIFA,
as we shout when Messi goes down in the box,
as we erupt when the referee looks the other way.
The game ends in Argentina’s defeat to the USA,
in our cousins tossing the Xbox controllers
after being robbed,
in us laughing at this fabricated history
and in turn, their loss—
a moment that needs no translation.
outside, my mother sits next to my father
on the porch, a few feet in front of the dirt road
riddled with ruts, watching the children of yoro
kick around an empty Coca-Cola can.
