Alli Cruz

Rosemead

The announcer slurs Spanish from the T.V.

like a lost relative. Abuelo rocking in his chair,

he came here knowing one word

of English: Cardinals.

Back in Cuba, listening to every game,

he squatted like a catcher 

beside the radio.

He wanted to be buried in his Cardinals tee.

I stood in the pews,

one hand clasping a book of prayers

I could not pronounce. 

He used to sit on the porch

at sundown, framed by 

his white plastic chair.

One night, haloed by yellow porch light,

he mumbled to himself.

I asked my father what he was saying.

He’s just speaking gibberish, my father said.

He’s not saying anything.

The Flood, Again

i. 

Liv, my oldest friend, waits 

on the other side of a wave. 

Seaweed clings to my ankle. 

Two children trickle past,

shivering into the Pacific.

The new tide disappears 

both their feet.

I wade in the water to my knees,

my first outing in weeks.

The sea catches 

every step.

I hear a boy asking someone to stay.

ii. 

Liv’s voice finds me

before the next wave, Let it carry you. 

I have trouble letting things happen. 

My head plunges underneath the crest. 

I am learning to be gentle, especially

with myself—here, held only 

by this one quick breath.

Forever

My father had this theory that he would live forever

because from his perspective, birth to death, 

he will. & it’s true: we can make a word mean anything,

so long as we control the definition, which is why

I never trusted the word “romantic,”

or anything that claims to last

forever. How you can’t trust “Sugar-Free” labels

on Tic Tacs, which are 94.5% sugar 

despite FDA regulations that allow them to say, 0 grams. 

Once, I bought a boy I loved breath mints in the shape 

of tiny penises, thinking they were sweet enough

to communicate my affections, & also, I liked to watch him 

swallowing dicks. How I could give him something

that disappears itself on the tongue: the reason I read him poems 

at night in his dorm room, knowing that, asleep, 

my words would run off with him to some faraway place 

I could never touch. & because he would always leave 

before me in the mornings, I woke up most days alone 

in his bed, harboring the same feeling I got 

a year later, rising from my lofted bunk 

in that narrow room in New York that was mine 

until it wasn’t, after which I stood in the street, 

thinking of how beautiful the city was 

with its people and its particular stink

that I would only miss after it was gone. 

I can live in the city, but don’t want to die

in it. I want to be the sort of person who is unafraid

of death & love—in that order—because it’s sexy to be fearless 

the way he insisted we sleep on the sidewalk if we missed 

the last train back to campus, though we caught it, just in time, 

& the whole ride home I asked him to make up a story

about the man in the purple fedora, 

sitting his back to us 

around four or five rows over. 

He gave the man a name & an ex-girlfriend & a vice

he couldn’t swear off: a believable story 

that had us laughing for miles until 

the man got up at his stop, 

turning to follow the freeze of the opening night, 

& if I’m being honest, I never did get a clear look at his face.