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Mamá
soy viuda de la persona que fuí.
mi cuerpo presume a la guerra cómo una presea,
montañas abriéndose en la curva de mi abdomen.
creé mundos desde mi luto,
y deje mi historia sin concluir.
what is it about gluttony
about that beautiful thing
about that need to swallow
about that need to feed
how is it that i swallowed you whole
after you made me?
i spit you out and put you back together.
you do not look the same --
torn apart, wings pulled from your back like
a fallen angel. Lucifer did not glow
as bright as this. i swim against the current, still.
i search for you, still.
hoping you can put me together,
so i can see those infinitesimal parts of you scatter
in my hands again.
i am no Eurydice.
Orpheus wrote of times
like this, under the pale sun,
milky-white, like the plains of my skin.
i would break my neck for you,
maker of mine. break my neck to see you one last time.
what is love if not this?
if not your hands, stretched and furrowed with age. if not
your voice, rucked with that worry or your
heartbeat, that i mimic, that rumbles in my veins,
that i carry like a child since birth, the blood of my blood, the sorrow that courses through it.
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Mamá, which means mom in Spanish, is a poem I wrote as I was deciphering what it meant to love my mother as much as I do. What does it mean, really, to be a daughter? What do we take in order to be able to live?
I would be remiss if this poem hadn't been written, at least partly, in my mother tongue. The poem is, in some ways simple, in some ways not, as existence is. I hope it speaks to all the mothers and all the daughters who break themselves apart just to end up mirroring each other. Maybe that can be a beautiful thing.
Translation of 1st stanza (from Spanish):
i am the widow of the person i was.
my body shows off war like a medal,
mountains opening in the curve of my abdomen.
I created worlds from my mourning,
and left my story unfinished.