Childhood

Sickly male perceptions

Scornful on Lithium, gaining weight

Papa’s wild memories of an Ecuadorian childhood

Are vivid like her own

Papa is a gay painter, he married mother

“It was her idea” he always would say

The way he spoke of women

Made her wonder why she was breathing

The way he leered at young dark men

Made her want to shrink out of her dress

Don’t be like Mommy

Don’t be an irrational fanatic

Don’t fall in love with a gay man

Don’t be poor, always late

A “beautiful-faced bitch”

She loves my puzzle pieces of being

She spreads her life before her like diaphanous silk

Created without the death of a single moth

Menthol smoke she inhales

Burning calm painted spider boy

Mother is a self-proclaimed fag hag

Mother used to be drop-dead gorgeous

A balloon with a black window inside

Tossed right over her

“You’re just like your mother” they say

“You’re going to be a fag hag until the day you die” her mother says

She wonders why she is alive

Ripening, ripping

Sapphic stringed Victorian doll, provocative glass eyes

Eyes always to speak, always to cry

Grew up to the soundtrack of Priscilla Queen of the Desert

Her mother’s voice echoes like a murky home video

Tasting her mother’s beet root soup,

Her dad’s fried bananas and bocadios with avocado and pesto

The factory in East L.A., filth and drilling shrills

The porn under bed, in the office cabinets

That the workers tried to hide

That she would extract

Bored with the butterfly stencils and oil pastels

And staring at the painting of her nude mother in an electric chair

She wanted to go home.

The warmth of being six years old

A piggy back ride with Papa toward the Echo Park Lake

Inhaling his skin tinged with sunscreen and patchouli

The scorching sunsets of his paintings flow through her

And then she is wrapped bed with mommy

Enthralled by her lullaby, Angel baby

Crying because it’s beautiful

And she remembers the sweet taste of breast milk

As she inhales her mother’s nightgown scented of sleep and pastel colored candied

almonds that are given as favors at baby showers.

And her brother killed the black widow in the bushes with a bat

Because the peach tree blossoms always wither

The dark coolness of mother’s womb, infinity in a well of life-giving tears

“Please never leave me blue and alone

If you ever leave me, I’m sure you’ll come back home

Because I love you, I love you I do.”

I love my puzzle pieces of being

I spread my life before me like diaphanous silk

Created without the death of a single moth