Discretionary Love

Today I found the path she had so long worked to clear swallowed up by prairie grasses. I’d watched her felling trees and grinding stumps,

A mosaic is forming, A sprinkle of unplanned smiles, an equal amount of denial One part butterflies, an elephant to complement the rest A generous

When I was six years old and my familia was living in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania on Thomas Boulevard, my madre got very ill, and my hermano

Martyr me      on the first day of autumn     when morning tastes     of salt and death     and the

Last name was Notario never knew their first names. I was a cashier summer job restaurant by the Bay. He would come in first take

When we were kids an alley separated our houses, you were the new girl; all exotic from the city, your dad didn’t have calluses; called

Small things: not returning a phone call right away, not offering early enough to set tables at the spaghetti feed for the homeless, not filling

The dust settles, a fragile ceasefire in the kitchen light, the air gritty with unsaid apologies, yesterday’s words like shrapnel lodged beneath a skin of

Spread the words On the wings of Aeon Cuddle the skin Aglow with the sun When the tip of the spear Is my kith and