How to: live

On a bed like a casket, I sit down to write what

it means to be a child, and I hear the sweeping of mosaic

floors cold as winter feet, and the routine in which my nani

darkened her face to the rules that defined her love as something difficult.

Her children lived under her shadow, the thing

known as family, and she lived, hunched over – a neck craning tenderly.

My grandparents lived in a house older than the country itself, or so

I was told, and there, being a child meant occupying

the silence of the mosaic until it clung to your face and hair.

In about a year, both of them would pass, their beds, first their

caskets, then empty. And childhood would start to wane.

My shadow never left a mark on the house. My shadow,

which meant my weight,

which meant my life,

which meant my love,

would stay silent except for in odd hours. 

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Hair

My love always arrived wrapped in silence, wrapped in

dust. But that was childhood. Today, the sight of my face as

just another face on the mirror

showed me how love isn't meant to exist under

shadows, yours or mine.