Drowning in the darkness.
Surrounded by capitalist-minded machines,
Your energy smiled at me
Radiating livelier than the sun.
Rocking snapbacks and Iversons, or lashes and hoops,
The love you gave unconditional and judgement free.
Refreshing mind in a sea of
White washed beauty, colonizer binaries.
Under the radioactive stars
Bordertown night sky,
We shared our dreams and wept our traumas,
Floating for hours on cloud nine.
Your gentle soul breathed life back
Into my decaying teenage spirit,
Like fresh flowers in spring bloom.
After years of family quinceñeras, friends’ cumpleaños,
I was slapped by your silence.
No call. No text. No Myspace mention.
Day33 my cell vibrates to the beat of our favorite cumbia,
Jolting my heart from the hibernation of a harsh winter.
Your hermano’s voice reaches through the phone,
Forcing my heart down my throat, back into my chest.
His silence is loud, until he asks if I’ve seen the news.
Mi corazon plunging down into the pit of my stomach,
Internal acids eating her alive as I visualize the headlines.
Adolescent body strung up off the banks of the Rio Grande,
Like the remains of a piñata after older cousins have their go.
I only caught pieces of his chatter: Body. Identify. Help.
My mind drowning in the screams
Of my deteriorating emotions.
Walking through that morgue, my eyes locked on that slab.
Your family’s eyes pierced through me in apprehensive wait.
They pulled back the cloth like a curtain to the last show,
Revealing an unrecognizably grey, moldy hide.
The smell of embalmed skin made my stomach churn,
I tried to focus on the coroner’s words.
I make out: Fresh. and Tattoo,
Gesturing to an area of this lifeless corpse.
Choking back moans of anguish
I recognize my art on your left rib cage,
Like a faded picture exposed to the elements.
Then I realize that you’re shorter than you should be.
Flat surface above the neckline
Where your chestnut brown eyes used to beam with love,
Between those goofy ears and even goofier smile.
A screeching wail fills the room, pulsating out from my soul.
My empty body plummeting to the ground,
Your ‘apa’s arms catch me like a safety net.
Now doomed to dredge my days into adulthood,
With faceless monsters and heartless robots.
Without your love, I’m alone again.
✊🏽 Sueitko Zamorano-Chavez