#latinext

I am the deer no one resents until it leaves the forest and its divine architecture— how all green has a gate choking it.

If home is not bloodstained teeth and a taste for vengeance, it is seeing what has been coming all along and having the arms open to hold it.

But the sky above my childhood home, edging down the hill,      is a painting I carry, cast in a cheap gold frame,      to every room I've lived in since.

we call on god / in our goodbyes       adiós / name our children after him Jesús / suspended from our necks / beneath our breasts / pendulums / of piety / we carry the weight of him amén—why does the earth tremble / beneath us / when every day / like sackfuls of sand we spill over / onto this earth / with his name / blighted bark / in our mouths?

I am afraid, of something I am, but have never named. My tongue is a refuge for secrets. How does one still fear banishment if they were born an exile?

When I am asked why I am so careful, or why the calculation takes so long, my only answer is my mother raised us to know some women don't have the luxury of fucking up the first time.

here I stand / still / at the edge of this mouth this piercing pant / of a country / in perpetual weep and rage and plight / for what is betrayal if not happiness in a place not home