IN JUPITER IT RAINS

f i v e

Poetry

all the words i have drank from my mother's breast. inside the sweetness of her chest, there was a sadness so great a nopal grew there - prickly and proud - it gave tuna to replenish her clouded eyes. my small hands
r e a c h e d and clawed only to sprinkle her chest and my face in blood. my cries were loud and salty, they scraped at my wounds and made mamá's milk blue. and so i drank her milk in silence, i think i stopped crying forever that day. to hold mamá together and make the nopal grow strong. she doesn't like to remember how she made me bleed and i don't remind her how her sadness made my blood purple. sometimes mamá likes to say i was always the strong one for never crying, i touch her face with my punctured hands and smile for her. every word i have learned from her is a lágrima i keep to myself at night. every cupped palm is a replacement for jugs of blue tinted milk she has fed me and the laughs that rang out from her mouth that speared words she feared to say. the stuck honey covered palabras were droplets of honeysuckle at the tongue of my mouth. i am all the anger mi familia has attacked her with. i am all the regret mamá held in pride. i am all the love she whispered to me in her stomach. it is in my veins that her words take

flight.

words:
nopal - cactus
tuna - prickly pear growing off a cactus
lágrima- to cry
palabras - words
vuelto - flight

To ENAMORAMOS por tus palabras de magia y tu corazón que es más lindo cada día