The Ritual of Love And Leaving

Abuela

0227.2009

We rose before the sky undressed its night,

watched morning pluck the stars—

one by one—like thorns from a wound.

We drifted like echoes across the dew—

little silver-bellied beads

sinking into earth beneath the heat’s

indifferent jaw.

Cotton rows uncurled at our feet,

their pale tide blooming toward

some distant, unspoken end.

We walked not to finish,

but to enter—together—

this quiet origin of a shared breath,

and under the saffron hush

of our unnamed and unlived day,

we shaped our mouths into

“buenos días”

as the women passed,

their faces open to the light.

Mi abuela made a ritual

of flour ghosts and the crackle

of green fire—

her old palms bending at the joints,

slender fingers folding

morning into dough.

The peppers coughed black

in their metal beds—

she and I coughed too—

as maize peeled back

to reveal its silk-laced children

curling in their golden sleep.

Apricots, bruised by sweetness,

let go their stones—

and from scratch

she built the kind of pie

no one teaches—

only time can knead

into your wrists.

Now Abuela nears ninety.

The moon pulls dusk across

the eye of her long life.

I see her—

since the blazing dog days left us—

her hand curled like mine

in the bend of its leaf.

Her eyes cradle me.

She says when I remember,

“I wish you a very good life.”

She kisses the white swan

neck of my sorrow.

Her heart weeps

for the edge of its time and ours.

I cry,

breaking her small bones.

m.c.f.