today I found out that I am fat enough to worry about diabetes and my heart walks out a bit today I watch the belly of my wife on a monitor watch my child a baby girl stir for a brief moment in white lines on a black screen a sonic youth watch at first that she doesn’t move, watch as she slowly flexes after the med tech gives my wife apple juice to make baby girl sugar up and I smile and yet I turn around and I am still in the dark and it now 10:50 at night I think I have slept part of the evening away dreamt of what it will be like to hold her brown body in my arms and I wake wanting to hold a coo hold a set eyes and chubby cheeks a head full of hair and then I run across the news run a tennis ball across my wife’s back run my forearm against tears down my face run a cup of ice water to my lips run a prayer in my throat

Claudia Patricia Gómez González has been killed in Laredo Sabika Sheikh has been killed in Sante Fe Claudia Patricia Gómez González has been killed in Laredo Sabika Sheikh has been killed in Sante Fe Claudia Patricia Gómez González has been killed in Laredo Sabika Sheikh has been killed in Sante Fe

Tejas Tejas Tejas

I can not imagine letting my daughter go cannot imagine what a phone call will bring cannot let the navy of night count me scared but I am and I want to hide her when she is born not tell a body that look we have a baby and she looks like her mother that would be too black or look we have a baby and she looks like me her father that would be too brown or look we have a baby just leave her alone just let me hang on for a minute before I die let me fill up on all this sweet baby before I go and I feel ill if I can’t put her in a walnut shell wrap her up in a huipil or green savila wrap her up in my fingers and keep her away from this place this place splits children from their parents and then loses them this place lets white men kill brown girls this place this place lets us forget women and say we love them this place lets us walk around saying she deserves it this place won’t take my daughter this place won’t take my daughter this place won’t take my daughter it didn’t take my wife it didn’t take my mother this place is so cruel that my tatarabuela Maugra imagined my uncle’s home was a capilla and we called it dementia and up until she was one hundred and four before she died she walked every amanecer into the door way got on her knees lit a candle and prayed this place be a warm place be a place where mariposas could call a sweet home where to flutter in the light