Responding

Bajo,

His face on light and his hair long fast like I remember it. Hours of compliments and questions of how my heart responds to the saying of someones name. The repeating of someones loss. I do not remember some things, this is something I forget.
He asks where you are, what you do, and I think oh my god. I don't know. Where you are, what you do, if something is happening, where you get money and who you give it to, and of course why. This, I tell myself, justify, this I say is life. Things float in different directions. Perhaps this is correct, perhaps I am right. Never the less I am sad.
This little piece of land, my mothers mini paradise with a greenhouse on the porch that glows in the dark with green hangings, and clay pots overflowing with lavender. I want this and I have it. I have it for now. I see her husband in the morning taken so well to role of farmer. He feeds the chickens and ducks before he gets in his large red pick up truck to go to work. They flock to him and they love him even though he does not love them.
The children. They grow, like all of us, and they form into small pasts and traumas. They collect their patterns and put them on display. Because they have yet to encounter the necessity for shame in their imperfections. They understand they are just alive.
So I have arrived here to the comfort of my beginnings and I pet my dogs and I feed them well. I crawl out of bed in the morning trying to maintain a schedule, I make things with my hands, I hook and knot and I stack and paint and write, always. I collect old letters and he suggests responding to the emptiness that they have inside of them. This seems like a good idea, like a fine idea, and yet I cant imagine what I would say.
I tell myself not to fall in love with christian boys who can not speak well. I tell myself this does not make sense. I tell myself my lover is coming for me soon and I tell myself to be patient with my confusion. But then I hear myself saying things like I do not want this part, I do not desire, and I am a passionless woman as of recently, I hear my hands get achy, and I hear my legs still, they do not shake bent over sinks or tables or beds they do not bend at all. I am a paper box and am being choked by the weight of my analyzing. I am a paper box with writing on the sides that do not resemble anything of a practice. I do not do this, I lie, and I erase.

Caridad