When you pray to your ancestors I pray too—
por favor, avó, não deixe isso ser verdade—but
I don’t ask them about the bolt piercing
the heart on your skin, or why I’m a decade late.
My mothers foretold that night you pulled me in,
foretold how you’d take my head in your
steel-trap hands. Listen: quando eu não estou
com você, estou pensando em você—can you hear it
over the coffee fields, the cries of the women
birthing in the dirt? Can you hear it underground,
deeper than the seeds and the roots and the cashbox
and the mantle? Down in the core I’m keening
quando estou com você, estou pensando em beijar você;
down in the mantle I’m keening you home.
