For Danay Valencia
Swallowed in cocktails, crack, cardiac arrest, Mami is dying. Her body distilled to machinations, her bones protrude into finality. Tubes pump her life in and out like the hips of the man who poisoned her. I scramble between three page papers and public housing, As long as they don’t know she’s gone, we’ll have a home. Her eyes are closed to all of this, her mind immune to mothering. We are nothing if not her daughters. Smiling, our hearts filled with hopelessness, hustling a couple more hours. Each of us under a narcotic comforter, we scrape mercy from God’s bowels. Praying she’ll surface from the rabbit hole of her body, we chisel at the asphalt of time.
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