Mom is cleaning out her perfumes today,
hands me a bottle,
says this is what she wore when she was my age.
The musk shakes onto my palms,
the bottle fogs at my sweat.
I am remembering her scent.
The sharp bottles of Armani Code Blue
stare up at me from her vanity.

When I was 5 years old,
I wanted to look like mami,
so I used her cherry blush,
her **** lipsticks,
capping them  before twisting them down,
opening her perfumes and painting my legs with them.
My mom came home,
saw the powder spilling on the mirror,
and cried until her limbs shook.

I am remembering the basement.
I was 8 and shivering,
mom sank into the swell of a rain slapped carpet,
grabs my wrists, wrings them into the shape
of a J’adore bottle,
wrapped and twisted and golden,
asks me why all I do is fight her.
Her favorite perfume stains my arms red.
This was the first time I ever felt scared of my own mother.

My mother and I are different in our scents.
While I smell like blood and lipstick,
she is as aggressive as the perfume she wears,
the bottles in her lines in her bedroom,
Today she decided to get rid of them.
I hope she knows
no amount of perfume can make me forget the cigarettes,
the kicking,
the mangled wrists,
the drips of her perfume on my eyelashes.

I am wearing her perfume today.
The musk grabs my wrists and strips them.
I hope she knows that I forgive her.
That the smell of her is still with me.

Cuban in America,
you know how my great grandma stung her fingers on lime when the screen door muscled open.
You know the grip when they tell her,
“Your husband is under arrest for conspiracy against the government.”
Your grandpa is also 6.
He watches his father torn from a wicker chair;
this is the last he will be seen for 30 years.
His mother shudders every time his children ask why he is gone;
they are stuffed with mango skin and salt, she is hoping they won’t leak,
hoping the Cuban government doesn’t strip more of her veins,
maybe he will come back. Maybe he will come back.
We know the price they paid for knowledge is twice the wrath they received.
When he is released, my great grandfather is only eyelashes.
His children run deep to him and he does not know. But you do.
Ten days later, he is found hung from the kitchen ceiling,
limes and mangos and salt and his children spilled underneath.

Dear Cuban in America
You and I have spent summer after salt-soaked summer,
staring at our grandfathers as we eat breakfast
you know his pan cubano sprayed with  I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter,
the lemon colored oil creeping into the holes in the bread.
Corn flakes, heavy with whole milk we were never allowed to have at home.
we were seven and waiting for him to say anything,
he was seventy, waiting for us to do the same.
We are too shy and our grandfathers  are not forgiving.
When we does speak, it is too thick,
so we sit quiet peeling mangos of their acidic skin and listen to  his accent tumble by.

When our Abuelos left Cuba, they were 30,
they ran to the U.S. leaving windy promises they wouldn’t stay long.
They were beautiful and crumbled,
and Castro never let them come back.
My Abuelo stumbles on words and pieces of mango
and tells me about his father, his donkey, his ache streaked sister.
He hasn’t been home for 50 years.
Our relatives shatter to this country and he knows what they have left behind.

Dear Cuban American,
I do not know why I say we
Our abuelo ‘s are more Cuban than I can ever try to be.
When I try and speak, the language is molasses
I grasp at a country I say I love.
I am no Cuban American the way you are.
I never got to feel the way a street crumbles under dictatorship,
never taste arroz con pollo the way you had,
never walked with the most beautiful girl in *****,
never clasped a lime stained kitchen.

I didn’t know how much my Abuelo wanted to see the Cuba he left etched onto my palms.
How much he wanted to hear me sing guantanamera
You two know the history of the island,
the red stars and blue stripes,
the shackles and homes falling underneath  palm trees bled out.

Cuban in America,
the years on our grandfather’s wrists grow plenty.
I realize the chances for me to become a true Cuban are slipped.
Now our Abuelo’s sweatshirts are stained with salt and whole milk
they fall asleep on benches and trip in grocery stores.
Our moments are hung  from the kitchen ceiling,
milk, and salt, and mangos, and limes, all spilling.

Susana means lily of the valley.
Shoshanna, curled petals for hair and a bridged nose,
pollen specked and running.
I was named for Abuelita Susana,
she was a leather belt and anti-semite,
stinging my dad with welts until adulthood.
Abuela did not mean her name
until her stem shook down to dementia.
curled petals for a mind, bridged heart,
pollen specked and waning.
The only thing she remembered
was her grandson and a record player
and Chiquitita.
I am not like her.
She was harpooned, jagging,
never the lily of the valley.
I am glad I have a chance to redefine Susana.
A lily in a valley
of infinite Susana’s.

My grandmother keeps statues of saints in her bedroom.
They line up on the edge of her shelves
and I can’t help but think they sigh to her
one of the only loves she has left.
When her husband died
I imagine she spoke to them, asking how to be a single mother
and why do all the good things in my life leave.
and maybe they answered back,
took her young woman eyes and shut them deep
deep in the way that only saints can do.
When I go into her room, it’s not the Spanish television I hear,
but the saints on her shelves, murmuring to my grandma,
the blue light moving through the windows,
while she listens to the only love she has left.

I think your hair looks better now that you've grown it out.
Let the curls that come natural breeze down your neck.
It looks like you belong in it.
Not like last year.
The way your hair, cut and lopsided,
German like the rest of you.
Spending time with people you knew weren't worth the honey soak on your hair.
I look next to me on your couch,
sideways and drunk,
notice the way our hair curls in the same directions.
How your kaleidoscope lamp lets the blonde reach out of our tips.
How the guitar on your lap leans to the middle of us.

I cut my hair two weeks ago.
I said it got in the way of performance,
but really I wanted you to see the way my hair curls natural breeze on my shoulders.

We are fighting about religion.
You ask me when I lost my faith in God.
I see myself, ****** lipped and angry,
ask you why it should matter.
At this point, I shake to the corner of your bed,
and you are crying, your black hair leaking,
you never expected me to judge you for being a Mormon.
I tell you,
you are the first boy I ever loved who believes in God.
You grab my hands, twist them under your blankets,
ask me if I've ever felt God lean quietly the way you do every morning.
So I pray with you.
Leave your house.
Don't tell you I am trying to bend the crucifixes in your mind.

My mom helps her best friend dump her mother's ashes in Lake Michigan.
She tells my mom how quickly this came.
How young she was.
When my mom gets home,
she tells me the air whipped the burnt body
takes a drag of her cigarette,
flicks the flame off her lips,
tells me she hopes to never get so old people are relieved when she dies.

I steal my mom's Reds.
Sit on the porch and pretend to be her.
It makes it easy that I have her nose.
I imagine dumping my mothers ashes into Lake Michigan when I am her age.
In my mind,
she is not burnt young, or hoping, or 54 years old,
her ashes tumble into the dark with the rest of the mothers
who's daughters sit on porches
taking their ashes and their stains with them.

A
Alex;
the boyfriend you had while I loved you.
Acid;
can I lend you 20 for some acid?
no. not even as you glint your eyes at me, no.
Anger;
with your family,
mentally ill sister and young parents
who don’t know how to deal with your
flickered drug habit
Attention;
what you don’t get enough of
and what you get too much of
B
*******;
yours are defining
cutting shirts into movements
your least favorite feature,
you always wished for my small peaks
but you have to learn the beauty of your own.
Blunt wraps;
you used an elementary school photo
of a black girl,
her cornrows burnt away that morning
C
Czajka;
chai-kah,
your name has always been a knife to me,
for the first month I knew you
I stumbled on the Polish of your mother’s maiden name.
Sha-jaka?
Calls;
I got a call every morning and every night from you,
so when I found out you didn’t love  me
those hours we spent
backing out the night sky
fell seamlessly away into phone bills.
Comfort;
your shaggy carpet
and ***** underwear
and peanut butter sandwiches
we were crescents together
I told you stories about the time I **** my pants
and you told me stories about how you peed behind the couch
and we were safe
under the lemon light of your room
Coy;
you are that to me,
not a tease but the sound of a wine glass in a sharp nailed hand
coy and subtle and pursed lips
E
Ex;
we are ex-never lovers
and ex-sweaty hand holders

F
Fragment;
you left me with your shards of light,
heavy sweaters and lip stains,
poetry books and fliers,
condoms and socks,
a bike lock and nail polish
H
Hair;
you ripped the hair out of my brushes
to keep in jars in your room,
Hair;
sharp and golden
tinted green at the bottoms,
flat on your head.
L
Lombard;
you live across town
and I spent days with you
listening to your iPod
stripped and full of Chinese food,
legs curled and stuck together
Love;
the only thing between us
was a blue light from a cell phone
N
Naked;
we have seen each other
husk and chicken skin,
only socks and earrings
or when I showered in front of you
***** hair rustling
you asked me why I fell in love with you.
P
Poem;
you read my first love poem to you and you cried at your desk
and I blushed and knew that you never loved me
I performed it that same day
and waited for you to hear me
but you didn’t come
and I don’t think you wanted to anyway.
S
Still;
sometimes i think
i still love you,
that dripping seed i felt for you
is hidden behind calling you crazy.
calling you ***** haired,
calling you nicotine-addicted
Smell;
it smells like Abby,
my cheeks rush and you must’ve been there
because it is just you in this room
Shoplifting;
you do it every time I am with you,
and I am guilty for the both of us
when I tried it for the first time
my fingers shook
and you bit your fingernail and laughed
and now I have a lipstain I think looks awful on me
and I am still guilty for the both of us
T
Tattoo;
you have an eye on your hip bone,
a quick decision that you will probably regret in a year
but I love it for now
V
*****;
the first time i got drunk was with you,
***** lemonade,
basement slurs
and it was disgusting
and I loved you
*****;
you threw up in the Salernos parking lot
on the corner of Fillmore and Home,
and in the back of Cal’s car
Virginity;
you lost your virginity to David
and you said it was just *** to both of you
and I didn’t believe you
and you fell in love with him
and cried when it really was just ***

My best friend and I got married 6 times
in my front yard that summer.
Our fingernails *****, hair short and knees bleeding.
The peonies lining my stairs leaned towards us
knowing what love was,
we were 8 and pretending to, toes muddy and noses burnt.

2. The window frames were the color of my mother’s lips;
at night,
I sat on the ledges and pressed my cheek
to cold shattered paint. My dad would ask
why my face was the color of a rose bud sometimes.

3. The tree in the front wasn’t sick
when I was younger.
I cried underneath it
and the ridges reached to me,
still and scraping, taking the pieces of me
I couldn’t handle. My love is somewhere deep in my front yard.

One mile deep,
he says.
It could be 100 miles deep,
and I would still want to jump,
feel how rose rocks kiss ripped skin.
While my uncle suffers from vertigo,
we look over the edge,
and I must be the only one thinking
how god loves these ridges
and how he seems to ignore me.
I am trapped behind national park barriers
and the canyon stays untouched.
Falling as deep as it wants to.

Someone in a dream gave me a gun.
Five seconds, a dog, and a man.
Asked me to shoot either the man or the dog.
I shot the dog, paws nestling on my knees.

When I walk at night,
my mom tells me to watch for strange men.
Sometimes, I come across a dog,
paws wet with snow,
the man yielding it lurching back.
Men do not love easy like dogs do.
They have their standards, or their mothers,
but dogs only need five seconds.