Almendares by Sandra M. Castillo

 for Tía Estela

✥ ✦ ✥

Blood puddles on the Spanish-white floor                                  like a

secret no one talks about,

 ✥ ✦ ✥

though everyone feeds it, like imagination,                              with hushed

conversation translating into fear,

✥ ✦ ✥

into memories I am told were never real,                                   though rooms

roared like the morning lion

 ✥ ✦ ✥

that hid in the closets of the upstairs apartment                        you rented to

a woman who couldn’t understand

✥ ✦ ✥

why dawn found her undergarments scattered                          on the steps

of her life,

 ✥ ✦ ✥

a display of familiarity or intimacy,                                                and

patterned echoes yawned like voices trapped

✥ ✦ ✥

between the clavicles of the past                                                     where

opaque breaths,

✥ ✦ ✥

calling us to maids quarters long sealed,                                     sounded like

the wind between the caves

✥ ✦ ✥

of the underworld we thought would swallow us                         into

darkness we opened looking for sounds,

✥ ✦ ✥

for hands folding into knocks,                                                  for mouths

moving into vowels, words,

✥ ✦ ✥

for someone invisible who woke you                                            to

midnight weight pressing upon you

 ✥ ✦ ✥

with the invisible thrust of unfamiliar desire                             until you

could feel the invisible moving inside you

✥ ✦ ✥

and a hot breath, never your own, equaling pain,                      dividing

fear into stories that kept us looking                                  for what we never

found.

 ✥ ✦ ✥