Mi' Padre' was stabbed in a bar fight.
The cantina is the deepest of wells.
Mi' Madre' put mi' ropa in la mochila.
La pandillas tiene mi' hermano - He fell.

Madre' sold her finest of silver
To buy maquillaje to color my face.
She said, "Better that you should have her"
To the man who had come from The United States.

Yo era una nina novia.
El era un hombre mayor.
I wanted to run away fast, go back home,
But nothing was there for me anymore.

I was but only sixteen.
I had never been touched before.
There I was in such a new land,
Our cothes crumpled on the floor.

The whole time I kept my eyes closed.
I longed for mi' familia and home.
He held me and slumbered when it was over.
My tears were hot and I felt so alone.
.
Yo era una nina novia.
El era un hombre mayor.
I wanted to run away fast, go back home,
But nothing was there for me anymore.

I was told to learn to speak English.
To abandon the language I knew.
I did not speak of my heritage,
It was better that I was kept from view.

I learned to cook like an American wife,
And soon I could speak like the rest.
It was difficult, but I learned how to fit in.
I even changed the way that I dressed.

Yo era una nina novia.
El era un hombre mayor.
I wanted to run away fast, go back home,
But nothing was there for me anymore.

These days, I spend keeping shop,
When the children are still at the school.
They are the heart of my life.
They are named Sally and Raul.

The nights are the hardest to get through.
I still dream of my other life,
Before I was given to my husband.
But I love him now, I am his wife.

But,
I remember when -

Yo era una nina novia.
El era un hombre mayor.
I wanted to run away fast, go back home,
But nothing was there for me anymore.

Lifeless stones in peace,

How many more tears to fall?

The mountain shudders.

And then
I held your hand:
where have you been so long?
Our worlds intersperse, but seldom
we meet.

How has life been since you
had gone over? Does the horizon still
shine where you look from ?

A statue have I made of you,
and I sit reminiscing
every morning, sun-kissed.

Do you wear bodies the way we do?
Do thirst and hunger bother you?

I have so many things to ask,
but first, let us
go strolling in the park, years, since
I saw you in the dusk, dust-laden.

Your shy smile, in the buds
blooming late by mellow winds;

distant in the leaves turned golden
your fiery hair;

the city below, still asleep,
stuttering in the lanes, your voice,
in the coffee morning shop.

my heart, all the butterflies.

Your dreamy smile, in
the toast maker lady at the kiosk.

You said I should go to Primrose Hill
So I went to Primrose Hill.

and I found you everywhere.

i could never understand the fact that
i felt something for you
that in all honesty,
i have never felt in anyone in my
entire existence

Famed to have brought light into being, but
dark, dark you are my friend, passing
through me effortlessly, though I know
there is an interaction: week, very week.

Deep there buried somewhere in my soul
was a throb heard, when every miracle
that forms the chain of my life surfaces:
and I've been searching for you. I thought

you were beyond oceans, where sky meets,
until my ship turned around at the horizon;
I looked for you in the womb of terran vaults
and then in the planets and the stars,

and you have been collapsing fields and
manifesting timelines so I proposer, meanwhile.
You are not what I worshipped in image and
then smashed it and sought in formless word.

Every time I grasp you, you vanish, retreat,
bubble-being, who knows what exists beyond
this expanse we inhabit, these membranes
and curled up manifolds, where in the knots

I'm still searching; But before even this unfolds
in full, I discover, it is all dark, darkness
that holds these tiny galaxies of light in its
densest folds; Magicienne, wave your wand,

let us know beyond the dark and the illuminated,
let us in, into the secret chamber of kinship.