Maya Garcia Fisher

All I Know 

is that my father never knew his grandfather very well. 
His name was Victor and his family nicknamed him Tío Papi 
and that they had very little but loved him very much. 
Victor whistled as he walked and kept candies 
and coins in his pockets for his visits 
for children. He never forced his daughters
to marry like many others did. He worked
At the Red Cross building in Managua 
when the earthquake struck. The building shook 
above him and his younger coworkers urged him to leave his desk 
but he shrugged them off, convinced the storm would pass. 
The storms always passed until they didn’t. 
The building came down on him. He died alone. 
All I know is that there is no other way to say this. 
All I know is that Abuelita for her father cried all afternoon. 
Papi was a child when it happened. He was across the city with his family
when the earthquake struck and his Abuelito died. 
He remembered his mother grabbing him and his five siblings 
and running out of their home. They chased after their own father 
who had left them all behind to save himself. When he tells me this 
he holds his arms out wide and curled like an eagle, 
like something desperate, like something that still feels awful 
and bruised; his face was angry and righteous 
like Christ flipping over a table in the holy temple. 
When the dust had settled and Managua was left with the 
rubble and debris and the statue of the saint that had somehow 
remained untouched, Abuelita’s brothers 
went to recover their father’s dead body. 
They found him and somewhere there’s a photo of his sons 
holding his hand through the destruction. Papi told me 
that all unidentified bodies were buried in a mass grave 
where they’d be surrounded by strangers 
for the rest of eternity. All I know is that when you die 
your body goes into the ground and stays there. 
All I know is that the only thing that separated 
Victor from a mass grave was the fact that a handful 
of people who had very little but loved him very much. 
All I know is that my father never knew his grandfather very well. 
His name was Victor and his family nicknamed him Tío Papi 
and that they had very little but loved him very much, 
and now there’s nothing else.