Rose De Maria

An Enduring, Perhaps an Endearing, Fiction

Title is a quote taken from the Introduction to the book, Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way, by Gustavo Pérez Firmat, published in 1994

Kitchen table conversations with Pa.

For real? And really? And when?

My curious sounds 

between scrambled 

storybook words.

That time you said: 

I shot myself in the face once. 

See, I still have the scar, 

just a scratch. 

A fleshed-over indentation,

not too deep. 

You said: 

estaba loco de verdad, 

yo siempre con la maldad, 

mira me ya, milagro de la edad. 

My once mischief-maker father

who used to hunt the depths 

of his Jutiapa mountains, 

while I’ve never even seen a gun. 

You list off dangers 

like old to-dos.

Rubbing your eye with piss 

for pink eye.

Flying off rocks

just to fall 

into rivers of lapping tongues and teeth. 

You speak of

your old terrain with

fond disbelief, 

practical fear you don’t really feel, 

but I do

as I learn of

dust-dry dirt where I could 

just slide off the mountain-top all together 

to fall into the clutches of a fantasy 

brought to life by rock walls,

trapped by roots too-deep to rip away

branches, sticks, splinters, thorns, leaf tips 

all tossed around, 

and sticking to the geometric patterns 

beneath the cowboy boots I see in your pictures, 

topped with sombreros and 

splashed brown button-downs, 

and as you continue, add and undermine the details, 

I almost see it, 

and I’ve described it before as… 

as maybe like the Wild West. 

Before I wait.

Stop and think.

No…

Price you paid, 

tax I owe,

I can only imagine the nearest trope, 

but nothing about who you were

and who you became 

can be compressed 

into that too-American

too-foreign name. 

See, nothing about who you were 

and what you remain

can you find in me. 

My memory trapped in your second age.

Way back wanderings with Ma.

Her opening 

and 

widening

mouth, 

mouthing 

mango trees and make believes

that are as fictional as the

brown eyes rolling, rolling back, 

boring their way through the past,

between the coffee trees 

and bloody knees, 

brown-red ponds 

reflecting sand-rock,

dirt kicked streets,

and the splintered edges of memory. 

Time and distance make it seem…

romantic.

A quaint, quiet, nagging dream.

How deceptive for you, 

and how easy it is for me

to ignore the pain, 

of when your abuelita numbed

your ears lobes

with the pinch of her fingers

and a lemon,

held you steady against

the quick stab,

of a woman who knows 

far too much is temporary, 

but she can leave a space, 

right there, close to your brain.

Yes, she can dig a hole, 

right where sound echoes,

so you can’t forget what I’ll never know.

Once, you say, 

I was only a granddaughter, age nine,

who would soon be whisked off

where abuelitas don’t follow,

No one warned me. 

Next thing I knew, 

a tomorrow without guavas trees, pebbled knees, a whole history,

But where

I would one day grow, 

without pierced ears,

with a different numb.

A haunting but hollow gnawing 

Makes me ALMOST wish for it back, 

but I know, I know, 

we know that’s the catch, 

a diluted ache that will one day pass,

but for now, I can still ask,

What was it like? Living under limon dulces? 

Leaning their leaves towards saturated earth?

Where flower buds can bite, but your life would never be spring?

A home with a whole lot of nothing, but the birds could sing.

The way you describe it… 

makes me mourn

that natural beautiful,

pretty but penniless but still… 

speak fast! 

or you’ll forget too. 

Speak slow, 

I can try to know.

You can try your best

until the moment 

you suddenly stop, 

as you falter to make sense 

of a familiar, 

foreign, 

fading 

past.

I mold my mind,

make it grow and grasp,

as your sentences slip 

and stain the air.

I wrestle with the wisps 

that you exhale between breaths,

to find some semblance of truth,

imagine some seeable you. 

Who? 

My parents, my new start,

your parted lips, your swollen heart,

imparting 

tragic, 

perfect, 

inhospitable past, 

re-making memories, 

like fairy tales, 

like fiction.