i sit and wait for another toll number to appear on the television, 

waiting for the fake apologies from the government and their carelessness on human life

and so history repeats itself 

the local activist who lost her son to gang violence, 

Areli Garcia, 25 years old, missing from Salinas, my hometown. 

it has been months, where are you Areli? 

the couple who got gunned down a block from my house 

their weeping mothers,

the police officer in my city, 

the nine VTA workers in San Jose,

the Miami condo collapse and all the displaced bones,

the mother who lost her daughter to femicide, who fought and fought for justice and who later was murdered, and whose family had to flee and seek asylum for their protection, 

the mexican passengers on line 12 who were crushed by a train, everyone has forgotten about them,

do they not matter as much as the children in Gaza?

the 53 migrants traveling from Mexico who were smuggled and later died…

the war with the cartels in Michoacan, my parents homeland, where people have no rights or freedom, a place i can never return to. it took so much from me already.

the war in Russia and Ukraine. soldiers sacrificing their lives for no cause. they are somebody's sons, somebody's daughters putting their life on the line and for what?

my grandparents who i barely remember,

the brother i never met but that saved my life as my mother recants, 

my brothers depression,

my childhood friend Marcos, decapitated and mutilated by the Cartels and delivered to his grandparents. i didn’t go to his funeral. i visited his grave on his 27th birthday, almost two years since his passing. i think of him often.

the girl who was about to graduate college and got hit by a drunk driver, 

the 17 children in Uvalde, Texas and the 2 teachers who felt safe at school.

June 24, 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court  overturned roe v.wade,

the women who are missing, murdered, gone

whose bodies have been disposed to nothing more than dust, who will never be found.

when am i next? when will my parents come looking for me? 

the friends and acquaintances who didn’t make it to another birthday, 

the 10 miners in mexico who met their end and drowned 

strangers that you feel a connection to on the other side of the world even if you don’t speak the same language, the pain is all the same, the trauma has carried us through generations.

every day i am dying

everyone around me is dying

i am shedding parts of my skin.

every day there are wars going on, little battles we are trying to fight.

today life feels like it is too much, 

 i cannot carry it any longer 

i stop making a list of tragedies porque nunca se acaba.

in place of my happiness i’ve begun to dig a grave for myself 

because what is happiness anyways? i’ve been dead for a while and so i go and cover up this corpse with everyone i grieve for, 

for my old self, whoever she used to be.

these days i barely recognize her. 

i am troubled by a life i am struggling to live and come out of

how does one cope with the collective loss we don’t speak about? where do all the memories go?

my body has gone numb. 

sometimes i do not feel like a person but a vessel

and this vessel is growing and i do not know how much it can hold before it breaks.

this  is how i grieve

and i don’t let go because letting go means forgetting 

and my memory wasn’t born to forget 

every so often i come back here  and remember 

i make myself remember that someone is missing them, 

someone is missing all of them.

i make an altar on day of the dead, 

and i pray for them and write their names down 

and while i write their names i cry for them, for the world, for injustice

i cry for myself. i want to save them, hold them, bring them back, 

instead i make their pain my pain.

the thing  about grief is that it is never ending

y tengo que aceptarlo, aprender a vivir con el dolor, 

con el fracaso y con la belleza que fue sus vidas. 

and i close this chapter but i do not put it away.