I would like to tell you about my mother’s erratic heart, or share what I know of Las Patronas, the women in México who prepare,
throw food and supplies to the migrants from Central America riding the top
of the monstrous train that carries
them north to the border of the United States, I’d like to discuss that summer at church camp when I was 8 years old, when
our counselor would have the boys in my bunk fist fight, swing tube socks filled with stones at one another, or the sight of that one boy
throwing another boy jaw first into the bottom of a urinal, and what I truly want to say is that I treasure the freckles that blossom
beneath your right eye in spring and summer, but can’t remember my social security number or friend’s daughter’s name, or when
The Great Famine ended in Ireland, or the name of that actor who always plays a serial killer, he looks like a praying mantis, and
night has suddenly spilled, and yet somehow I’m telling you that the moon was once a stone the first otter kept in its pouch, along with
all of the other moons and the planets in our solar system save our star, the sun, and that the first otter rolled the moon across its chest
and juggled it for eons, that stone kept the otter company, he would crack open the shells of his prey with the moon, and he has only lent us
the moon and the other moons, and the rest of the planets as a favor, and word is he’s on his way to retrieve them all, as luck would
have it he’s on the way, at this moment, should not be long, just wait, see.
