Cicatrices (scars)

She preps for the first cut,

a surgeon entering the operating theater.

desperation sterilizing her heart against the infection of affection.

so she scrubs herself raw,

scalding, soapy separation

gowned, capped, masked, and gloved,

she backs into the door of leaving,

careful not to touch anything that could contaminate and crumble her resolve.

Including her son.

5-year-old eyes too young to understand her post-op instructions

a sordid sermon

hollow homily

"No olvides ir a la iglesia."

as though church could cauterize the gaping hole in his heart

maybe the dregs of lingering maternal guilt must be confessed into forgiveness.

but she would rather fling it away, a hopeless "Hail Mary"

hanging, suspended, sustained like the last gasping syllable

"iglesi-AAAH"

as the knife slices deep into flesh and soul with no anesthesia,

severing heartstrings and apron strings that bind the boy to her side.

And then she is gone.

Footsteps fade into whispered prayers

an echo back to tiny ears in the void of night

"Mami se ha ido y estoy aqui"

alone.

vulnerable.

exposed.

a wounded heart weeping onto the thirsty earth

for the memory of a living ghost,

haunted by phone calls and presents sent to her past from some distant land of the future.

'Get-well-soon' sentiments empty as her promises and his dreams of reunion.

But Papi cradles him and dries his tears

and the boy tries with fumbling fingers to retie the frayed cuerdas around his father

who seems strong as the bricks he lays

day after week after month after year.

But the mortar soon crumbles

and again his world tumbles to the hungry earth

burying him in a tomb of rubbled hope like a ravenous maw

devouring tender-hearted flesh,

bruised like a dropped peach, cast aside by the negligent farmer,

his father too preoccupied with cultivating his new crop of family

to care for the perennial son left sitting in the stagnant earth

day after week after month after year.

He stems the tide of tears with a dam of drugs

vile vapors invading his mind and vitality

inhaling the addictive anesthetic to numb the still-throbbing pain.

a creeping fog of forgetfulness rolling in like Lethe,

and from his sticky stupor he watches his wounds stitch themselves together

into a colcha de cicatrices.

A quilt of scars.