reasons—I dreamt I lost a child.
The second one. I woke up.
I walked to their hammock.
The wood on the stove crackled.
The pot didn’t move.
The chicken pio-pioed.
They were not in their hammock.
I woke up again.
This time with a scream.
I pinched myself.
Slapped my face awake.
My children looked at me
like they do when I hit them
when they deserve it.
Their eyes like my eyes
without a light in them.
It wasn’t the empty pot,
the last chicken, the hammock
patched with pieces of cardboard.
It wasn’t the dream.
I wanted to wake up from this.
Salvador, if I return on a summer day, so humid my thumb
will clean your beard of salt, and if I touch your volcanic face,
kiss your pumice breath, please don’t let cops say: he’s gangster.
Don’t let gangsters say: he’s wrong barrio. Your barrios
stain you with pollen, red liquid pollen. Every day cops
and gangsters pick at you with their metallic beaks,
and presidents, guilty. Dad swears he’ll never return,
Mom wants to see her mom, and in the news:
every day black bags, more and more of us leave. Parents say:
don’t go; you have tattoos. It’s the law; you don’t know
what law means there. ¿But what do they know? We don’t
have greencards. Grandparents say: nothing happens here.
Cousin says: here, it’s worse. Don’t come, you could be ...
Stupid Salvador, you see our black bags,
our empty homes, our fear to say: the war has never stopped,
and still you lie and say: I’m fine, I’m fine,
but if I don’t brush Abuelita’s hair, wash her pots and pans,
I cry. Like tonight, when I wish you made it
easier to love you, Salvador. Make it easier
to never have to risk our lives.