i wonder
if someone else called you
to tell them a story
because the nightmares wouldn't cut their ropes,
would you kick your heels
upon your desk and spin
a tale as long as the night itself
until they fell asleep?
"a beautiful red-haired princess
lived in a land
far far away
but she was so amazing
that the prince would scale
the highest of the mountainsides
to see her"
you were always writing me
into fairytales
and sometimes they helped
fight the darkness
did I ever tell you about those nightmares?
how I heard an old Chicano folktale
about La Llorona
and how she came to me in a dream
weeping and screeching
and clawing at her eyes
and shrieking "Ayudame!"
through the tangle of the black woods in front of me
twisting riddles through my slumber.
do you know that
sometimes during barre stretch,
when we shoot our legs skyward,
or when i'm filing college interviews
your smile-laugh ripples
through my ears
and I grit my teeth
through peppermint pain
and try to drown it out?
did I ever tell you
when I got the phrases
"La Llorona"y "la rana"
scrambled up in my brain?
La maestra told us we would be
leyendo un cuento
sobre la rana
en the pond
and I thought she meant a story of
La Llorona
the wailing woman
maestro of a symphony of screams
and my heart stopped working
and I told her, "No puedo, I can't."
and she said, "Silly girl, la rana es 'the frog'."
and laughed.
do you remember when
they took me to a grave
and you told me about cancer
and how you thought that you'd die young?
you said it
so calmly
as if the dead around you
were offering up their Easter lilies
as a bridal bouquet
to be tossed to a lucky relative
and i just looked at you
with sea-glass eyes
and you kissed me
as the tears spilled over
into silent rivers
down my cheeks
i wonder
if sometimes
when you listen closely
you can hear the bottle-sculptures'
mouths lisping with the wind
or la rana
croaking in the pond
and smile-laughing right along with you
at me.
if the story has a different beginning now
or a middle
or an end
or if you've written me out entirely
or maybe just changed my fate
"a beautiful red-haired princess
was punished for her vanity
and doomed to wander and wail
for all of eternity
for she had done wrong."
and am I La Llarona,
the weeping woman?
because that's all I ever
seemed to do
The dreams are gone now
or, rather, the nightmares
but there are some things
more haunting in reality.
i wonder if she hears
the coded tick-tock
of the static
or the shrill cries
of tortured souls
forever searching
forever lost
i wonder
if you love her
more than me.