TÍA
After Aracelis Girmay
There was a portrait of you.
You, wrapped in deep-blue
Ocean fur. I wondered over
Your laugh, like a belch but
Regal and soft: all the birds
Responding. Oh, your blood,
Ours, all of us, not allowing you
Or I, the promise of health;
Of abundance like rivers and
Lakes. The gaze of your eyes
Appears to be saying— Tell me
About the pain, transfusions,
Your body rejecting the nectar
Of a ripe guayabas. I wanted
To meet you at the border-point
Between California and Mexicali;
Between this life and the one
That follows so stealthily.
Tell me When you listen to a
Body of water, do you hear song
Too? Oh, but you are here. Listen,
Hear, the mourning dove perched
Alongside the home you’ve lived.
Here, the home you’ve lived now
A multitude of this life and the
One that comes after and after,
A stretch of blue more continuous
Than the grandiosity of oceans.
Borders drowned under the gaze
Of a portrait of you, uninterrupted,
And, now,
gone.
Anthony Aguero is a queer writer in Los Angeles, CA. His work has appeared, or will appear, in the Bangalore Review, 2River View, The Acentos Review, The Temz Review, Rhino Poetry, Cathexis Northwest Press, 14 Poems, Redivider Journal, Maudlin House, and others.