your mother doesn’t quite understand when a woman wants to disappear she doesn’t want to be found and your father probably gets it but for his wife’s sake, stays silent . All the nights with your suegra. Sipping cafecito con demasiado azúcar. Trying to understand your mother. Siblings, not so much. “Those relationships sometimes end,” […]
hijos
Parenting a legacy.
bugs for her
Throwback.
Letter No. 4
The bright sun is depressing. The gray rain is a balm. Sometimes all I can think is I’velostmysonI’velostmysonI’velostmyson until I remember to keep breathing. To keep moving. To keep doing anything before the next wave surges over me again. But you were very sick. The woman at the funeral home gives me a hug before […]
Letter No. 3
It is easier to let you go, knowing—genetically speaking—you were never meant to be viable longterm. It is much harder to let go of the future we planned with you. How we remodeled the entire upstairs to make way for your arrival. All the maternity clothes I bought. The new crib. The new carseat. The […]
Letter No. 2
In the beginning, I suspected you. Whispering things in my ear. Things like café. Things like chocolate. Things I would never indulge on. The last thing you said to me was not a whisper, but a seed. Planted in my dreams. Blossoming on the tip of my tongue. You chose your name, Gabriel, when you […]
Letter No. 1
You say I was not excited for your baby. I had all her gifts picked out as soon as I saw your text. I was ready to be your sister in the dark month that follows the birth of a child. I was ready to be her aunt. My husband has been told you feel […]
Cempasúchil
They tell me to rest. I run. Until blood clots soak between my legs. They tell me to schedule a follow-up appointment. What else is there left to say? I have lost my baby. My son is gone. Has been gone. Gone. I know these things happen. How many times have I been asked to […]
mariposa
blood in the back of the throat taking the long way home isn’t that just how the thing goes slamming brakes for a swallowtail butterfly yellow wings beckoning for a better past losing, inevitably, scraping knees and knuckles against pavement boiling with sunshine, rays and beams never meant to have holding a book too closely […]
caterpillar midwives
She laid you down in a pocket of soil. Not the sedge—the perfectly good sedge, potted and planted in soil three experts said would be beneficial for the plant’s growth. Inadvertently, it would be beneficial for your growth, too, but we didn’t mean it like that. We didn’t mean it like that. So she laid […]
Just Thoughts 