My grandmother was my oracle,
speaking stained insights in a Spanish
I hardly understood at the time.
My offerings were small but true:
kisses, hugs, “I love you” on paper scraps
translated by my mother for her knowing.
It was as if I had written them in blood and
it became a forever tattoo of her heart,
a pumping cross, always giving and forgiving.
The yield was quarters, dimes, pennies
doled out from a repurposed wide-mouth
banderilla jar for the corner candy store tour.
She lived in a temple of rust seeping down walls, paint cracks, peeling checkerboard linoleum,
chipped ceramics, relics broken and glued back-
an unsanctified housing of brittle bones and
striations of hands and feet, sweet blood,
passed from thirteenth child to second son.
As my Spanish improved I was able to praise
the oracle with all the many spoken and
scribbled ways of Latin gratitude and adoration
under the watchful eye of my mother and
the care of twelve others who still lived
within the realm of her unwritten wisdom.
When her vision stopped and her blood
no longer flowed she was relocated with
all solemnity to rest under a Boricua tree.
My mother doled out her oracular inheritance
whenever I stumbled, wandered, questioned,
encouraging me to write it all down.
Now, she is mere dust in the echoing wind
and I am a childless prophet who appreciates
all the oracles that came before my time.
