Liz Márquez

Home

After Eloisa Amezcua

noun

1. one's place of residence

as in:

Texas. Where the good ol’ boys love their God almost as much

as they love their guns, or is it

the other way around?

I never can remember.

as in:

Migrants look for a new one on the other side of the Rio Grande and are met with a floating buoy border, anchored to the riverbed, which Joaquin Castro calls “state-sanctioned drowning devices,” and it could not be more accurate. They always meant to end us:

small, little deaths or that slow slipping into slumbering sleep.

I can’t sleep. The image of a little brown girl, clinging to her brown mother, crossing that brown

river, or trying to, are seared into my eyelids.

Two weeks later, I read another headline:

“Migrants not deterred by new Rio Grande floating barriers”.

And I laugh and cry

and laugh and cry.

At Greg Abbott’s 5 Billion Dollar Border Security Plan, at the irony, at the way they have always underestimated our will to survive. As if we weren’t born being pulled by currents, quickly learning how to tread raging waters. As if this knowledge weren’t ancestral.

as in:

Sometimes, I really fucking hate my home state.

2. the social unit formed by a family living together

as in:

You are our home.

You unlock the front door, and the dogs come running

to say hello, their tails excitedly hitting the walls. The sound

distracts him from TMNT on TV, and I hear “¡Paaaapiiii!” all down

the hall on his way to you. Your backpack drops to the floor,

your hands, arms, and shoulders making space for all of him. You listen

as he tells you about Donatello creating Metalhead in this one episode. I mean,

really listen. I think that’s what he loves most about you. I know that’s what I love

most about you. You come into the kitchen, hug me from behind. Give

me a slow, soft kiss on the cheek and I exhale the breath

I had unknowingly been holding in all day.

as in:

We aren’t whole when you aren’t home.

3. a familiar or usual setting : congenial environment

as in:

I still call Mami and Papi’s house “home.”

My sister calls, asks me where I am. “Home,”

I say, Mami yelling, “¿Es tu hermana?”

in the background, over the sizzling kitchen pans

and the Telemundo news anchor speculating

on the reported engagement of Pique and Clara Chía

and what must Shakira be feeling? “¿Hija,

ya comieron?” I say no, even though the answer

is really yes. The reason two-fold: One, I never

say no to Mami’s cooking and, two, it’s not

home without a plate of Mami’s food.

4. a place of origin

as in:

My mother’s womb, stretching and growing me. I wonder

what dreams she had for me, which of her prayers vibrated

from her throat through the amniotic fluid into my still-forming

ears. The way she loved someone she had not yet met, who

would wreck her life as she knew it. And how she would do it

again and

again and

again and

again, without hesitation.

5. an establishment providing residence and care for people with special needs

as in:

Abuelita Elena’s nursing home, that smells of fresh bleach and old piss. The walk to her room always wrecks me with secondhand guilt for the elderly, the ones forgotten by time, family, and the nurses on duty. I almost wish I could forget her. I’ve always chased ghosts, wispy fading things that don’t know how to let themselves be held. I’ve never stopped reaching either way. How I reach even now for her cold, translucent hand, still searching for a warmth I’ve never known at her fingertips. She mutters nonsense and I listen anyway, forgiving her and believing the lie.

verb

1. to return accurately to one's native area of place of birth or origin from a distance : to return home

as in:

Coming home to Ecuador after the eternity of a decade.

And Tía Sandra’s embrace is like coming home,

her “mamita” leading me to still waters, refreshing

a deep thirst I didn’t know was stuck in my throat.

And the way Tío Guto tells the story of how

I came to call myself “Ebiyao” because I could not say

“Elizabeth Ayala,” that too is home. I’ve never felt more

fully known. And the three helados de coco we had

that one day from guayaquileño street vendors, that felt

like home too. And the sharp, new pain every time I look up

to Tía Flor’s balcony expectantly and the reminder of loss

becomes fresh once again,

that aches

of home too.

ñañitos

when the brown boys play fútbol, they are weightless. untethered

and unthreatened, the sweat runs free from brow

to chin—a proclamation. this unpolished bit of Earth

now their arena, and the reminder rests beneath

each fingernail. the grass grows tall here. a corner kick

is made from imaginary sidelines, borders that have never existed

in their world anyway. they run—laughing between short breaths, cussing

at one another out of cariño and coraje. the sound, it rises

from the deep wells of diaphragms. this

is inherited memory: one falls and their secret is kept

in grass-stained knees and dirt-smudged palms, in hands

that uplift and reawaken: ñañito, we do this together.