Farm of Forgetting

Mamá,As the earth shudders, you open your eyes.Your eyes take in the cold gray sky hovering behind palm trees that survivedHurricane Maria, the hurricane that split your cabinets.Earthquakes cracked your walls.You hear your name. Feel fingers smoothingAgainst your brow. Gray sky, quaking earth, persistent palm treesBegin preparing for your return.From your bed, your frail voice calls out toYour Amados, your beloveds. Amado Sr.,Your beloved husband, sits by you.He takes remnants of your hands still filled with flesh and warmth into his.Amado Jr., the younger beloved, brews your coffee in the kitchen.The aroma of Cafe Rico wafts past decaying cabinets.The paint crumbles off the walls.you revisit memories of las nenas de Mamá.They crawl into bed with you as coffee percolates.Their knobby knees, your gnarled, knuckled handsshare warm hugs and giggles.They squeal and hum and hug into you how much they love you.They never outgrow the words and the hugs girls need to grow up to give to men. Mamá, if you only knew how long I never wanted to love them.The elder Beloved asks what else you need.The younger Beloved adds milk and sugar before bringing you coffee to your bedside. I still remember you bringing it to mine, MamáThe elder lifts your lip up to the cup as his son sits.They don’t know, among other things, what the graying sky, the weathered trees, the shuddering earth have come to do;they do not yet know of your homegoing.Café con leche is the last bit of sweetness to touch your lips.After it has coated your throat, with a coughand a squeezing of hands, your soul follows the graying sky, weathered trees, the shuddering earth home.You leave your body behind surrounded by the ones you insisted see you through this end.And you, Mamá, are grateful.The younger beloved throws himself on what’s left of your skin and boneswhile the elder beloved weeps. Their cries, ride the Caribbean winter breeze,bringing providence in to call an ambulance.You inform the gray sky, the quaking earth, and the stubborn palm trees—You tell them—that you and your God have prepared.You bought your coffin, your plot, you bought the nameplate your life never allowed you to read.You reserved the funeral home.Las nenas need only worry about the planes. Mamá, I worry about fading. I worry about the tumor returning. Mamá, I still worry about COVID-19.As others’ souls slip through them, the gray sky, the trembling earth, tell youThere’s never enough. Resistant tears, and youthful heartsAre never prepared.Never wanting,Never wanting to lose your hands.You remind the earth, the sky, and the silent treesyour love doesn’t die with your body. Mamá, how can I agree when forgetting to love me was necessary for your surviving?All the secrets, all the unnamed wounds, the palm trees hiss,Get left behind.They linger, the quaking earth says, longer than it takes your body to join me.Those scars flounder, the palm trees persist, before you become the earth that feeds me.The unnamed hurt, the gray sky spits, gets pulled out of me . . . Aye, Mamá, I tire of hidingYour wounds are the roots that bind us.Aye, you say, they’ll forget—No, the sky and trees, and earth insist, not the women you birthed to carry us. I never wanted to remember you as anything but warm, Mama.