Stenciled Memories

- Lorna Dee Cervantes

                            for Gra'ma

 

There was always fabric in your lap

and a whistle in your heart. A sweet

sap to be sucked waited in the garden.

Nymphs of newts nestled under rock,

your role as She Who Brings the Waters

intact. Between the trilling of the crickets

educating into the night and the sad sack

of cans in the mornings something grew,

flourished in the dark — vines as sturdy

as telephone wire writhed in the breezes.

You patched together a blanket of us,

sewed together the mismatched and lopped

off edges. And anger grew a twin, ripped

through the bermuda grass, something stubborn

and determined: Me, in a leather patchwork skirt,

the bitter lemon song returning to its beginning

over and over on the Howdie Doody phonograph,

a handful of bandages, a faceful of ghosts

delivered from the mirrors. How did you stand it?

All of it. Us crunching through your set life,

kids scuffling through the mounds of leave.

Always making do. Your sunshine eyes,

those stenciled memories where

we still live.

from: Sueño. Copyright 2013.