1,000 Sonnets Closer to Light

Location

I had carved names in the wood,
I came back to find them healed.
I go by a different name now,
but the roots of his seed he watered
is poison.

 

My family was a drawer full of snakes,
an echoing hiss of sins behind closed doors.
Home was nothing but a breeze,
it offered no refuge.

 

My mother and I darted out             
of a house that had us accustomed
to crawling on our knees,
with the horizon of the American Dream.

 

On our way to sovereignty,
I lie in his lies to calcify my backbone.
He used our souls for soles
and I am unbroken.
This was no fair fare,
I paid a high price for freedom.

 

I build paper mache shields,                         
as I became heir to a last name
which I do not wish to throne.

 

I am a sinking ship;
my mother; the uneasy sea.
We are unhealed warriors;
we set sail, but never anchor.

 

My mother’s name is “Luz”,
Spanish for “light”;
and because of her
I never have to live in darkness.

 

My moms’ words are fireflies…

 

Happiness is ashore,
on my mother’s chest.
Unsteady heartbeat with short breaths,
rough, dry, sand paper hands cuddling my forehead.

 

The permanent stench of bleach
from all the homes she wiped cleaned
to buy my dreams will never wash off…

 

Happiness are my mother’s poems,
when they taught me escape,
when they built me wings.

 

Happiness are these wounds that hunt me,
all healed up and dried blood;
all of his fists in my dreams,
all of her fondle awake.

 

Happiness is this coffee soiled breath
and this accent I can’t shake,
to remind me of this journey that holds no retrograde.

 

My mother knows no forgiveness,
she holds on to grudges
like dawn does day,
she counts each tear as they break.

 

My mother says she has forgotten how to pray…

 

She does not know
I’ve painted a sea of constellations
on her eyelids.

 

She follows no algorithm,
but does not convict me of my vices.
When you have tasted death
it is hard to forget we’re mortal.

 

Happiness is dreaming
she’ll never fade…
Happiness is callusing my hands;
so her hands can rest.

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