Slipping into Solteria?

Expectations set me up for heartbreak every time

and it’s not the fault of the other

it’s my fault

my poetic temperment and wanting to hold out hope for the best in people

thinking egotistically that I bring that out in people.

Pero no.

It never seems to work that way.

During one of our “talks” over vino on how we were going to move forward he surprised me,

surprised me by saying his ideal was for him to stay in what seems to be the cheapest apartment in Queens

and for the chicas and I to move out.

My reaction?

First to get physically sick and vomit.

The next morning I was angry.

I have now moved into scared and depressed.

And alot of this these seems to hinge on my status of soltera/single.

He asked me during that same “talk” if I was single,

meaning if I was dating/seeing/fucking anyone else

cuz if I was, he seemed to be saying, I would be out on my ass sooner.

Funny thing is I couldn’t really answer if I was single.

I mean I’m here living with my daughter’s father but we are broken up

and there are a whole mess of other factors that I dare not write here

that demand the question of my status be answered.

And I know some are reading this smiling a little

saying it’s my karma for the way I’ve chosen to live my life

pero the poeta in me still holds on to a little hope

still has some expectations

that it will all be ok.

Indiscretion

There was none here.

There was no foolishness

no not knowing.

I knew

he knew

and soon everyone else that need to did as well

even if we continue to play it off

each discussing the other in pronouns, initials, pseudonyms, and geographical locations

relegating certain acts to certain spaces and places.

Ya pa’que vale la mentira

la actuacion

el drama

of pretending things are the same

of saying we are going one place

when we are going somewhere else.

The hurt of reality has been cut into skin

now all that is left is the healing

the scabbing over

the scarification

and the remembering not to forget

so you don’t fall again.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Seems silly that he lied to me like that

after the more serious omissions and lies I have said and not said.

Pero he told me he was going to the museum today

with his family

with the free pass I gave him.

Pero then as I went off to buy a bottle of wine

to celebrate having the apartment the way I want it

with me and my daughters

I spotted him there

buying a bottle of wine

and I remembered

the how and the where that would happen before.

I don’t know why he felt he couldn’t tell me

the real plan for day

or why he just said nothing except he was going out.

It struck me.

I watched him from afar

waited for him to leave before buying my own celebratory bottle.

My Life is Not a Template

No women.

There is a reason why my story is not in books for me to sign,

why I have to carve out my own space through electric wires

and trasform actions into electrictrifies palabras,

why I spit on the ground and into teclado taps,

why I push my way in

and pull myself out.

No women.

There is reason

a porque

you don’t know who I am

and it is not because I am invisible

it is because you can’t be bothered

unless I am paired up with someone, something

that looks like your own privilege.

No women.

My life is not a template.

It cannot be copied and pasted,

followed like a guidebook

applied to children not yet in your wombs or delvered to your doorstep.

There is a reason you have nothing to add to the conversation

ask no questions

just watch and spy and shke your head and move on

como si nada.

Si women.

There is a reason.

Why I exist

and it isn’t for your benefit.

Le Signe de la mort

I bleed onto raw untreated canvas
so that the stain
spreads on brown stretched skin
aging
deteriorating
vulnerable.

I stab the surface and watch the red be absorbed
flow through the veiny threads,
left unconserved to rot in the sun of la verdad y el tiempo.

Asesino la palabra amor
con mi pintura femenina.
Respiro con la ausencia de vida en mi cuerpo
Y uso el lienzo para cubrir mi sueño durante este largo invierno.

En Este Riconsito

No existo.

Juge a la escondida

con la fantasma de una mujer muy viva.

Desaparesco

sin dejar heulla

olor

es como si nunca estuve.

Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes

I wept the first and second time I watched this movie. Maybe I need to stop watching it.

I’ve been Away

I took a vacation. A time away from the craziness that is the logistics of a breakup. A time away from the need to post a certain number of blogposts per day in order to reach a certain number of hits, a certain amount of money. A time away from the constant demands of mami’hood and responsibilities to communities.

Vacations are pure escapism yet my vacation in a super secret location was also about living painful realities, sitting with them, hiding from them, and facing them again. It was about sleeping in and witnessing patterns of daily life you dreamed about. It was about long walks under moonlit skies, wine, coffee, nakedness, food, familiar sounds coming from unfamiliar places, breathing in new air, mourning and then hoping again only to mourn some more.

I made a game about not telling people where I was going, about being all clandestina when it wasn’t a game at all, rather a request, a courtesy, a respect for myself and others and I guess a need. A need I still am not content with and resent the same way I resent all the compromises i make. I have started to question when consideration for someone else trumps your own path to happiness and if it should.

Now I brace for the long winter of change, emotionally sleep and hibernate, using my stores of knowledge and experience to survive and wait for the spring hoping it will remain true to its promise of new beginnings and rebirth.

Juge Todo

Y me quedo con nada

Milagros

After a 9 hour operation inside her head, My titi opened her eyes last evening and started singing. She recognized her sisters, her nieces, and her daughter. She said she was happy Obama was president and sent love to my toddler. She knew her name, the year, where she was, and she knew that she wasn’t gonna cook a damn thing for Thanksgiving. She flirted with a nurse, telling her she was “hot”. She told us she saw angels and grandfather and tias who have passed. My abuelo wrapped his arms around my mother and we all wept joyfully and breathed.

Cada dia es un regalo y este regalo es para ti hoy, Titi A.

I Do Not Live, Work, breath in the Abstract : This is Real

Yes, last night was historic. As much as I wanted to bask in it, feel it, cry for it, and jump for it, it was hard.

For the past few days I have been in the middle of a family crisis. My dear tia/madrina, the one who was always just down the block from me my whole life, una segunda madre, was diagnosed with a rapidly growing brain tumor. I have spent countless hours in the same hospital where I gave birth to Miss Poroto, pero now filling out papers to make medical decisions for a single mother who worked her ass off her whole life even when she should have been resting. She pulled me close to her in the hospital bed and in between incoherent comments, she told me the color flowers she wanted at her funeral, that she didn’t want to be incapacitated, that she had let people down, that she was in debt, to take care of her only daughter whose eventual one day wedding she would miss, that she wouldn’t see Miss Poroto grow up and damnit would she be able to vote in this historic election. Si she worrie

As I write this from my apartment, surgeons are operating on my titi. Looking into her brain that they mapped using dye, looking at what doesn’t look good.

Yesterday, as I blogged all day and almost all nite on the election, I was called in to be on live tv to discuss the election. I told them I would pero only if they had someone there who could help me with the kids. My familia was at the hospital, el chileno was working. The tv network agreed. As the car service that was sent called to tell me they were downstairs, Poroto took a huge shit. In the car over from Queens to brooklyn, Poroto vomited all over herself and me. I walked into the tv studio with a half naked toddler and me smelling like regurgitated fruit. I tried to control Poroto as I was made up for tv and tried my best to scrape off quickly drying bits of vomit. A producer whisked Poroto away as I went into the studio to discuss the election, Latino vote, immigration, and blogging. A fellow panelist, a professor asked what I blogged about while we were on break. I told her Latino issues and the mami’hood. As I explained the mami’hood concept to her, I mentioned that I was covered in toddler vomit.

So you don’t write from the abstract, this is what you are living.

No I don’t do anything from the abstract. I do not have that luxury.

As I left the set and the fantasy world of tv punditry I got to play in for an hour, my sister called me to tell me that even after the operation, the prognosis for my tia didn’t look good. Days. We are looking at days.
Once at home, with the toddler asleep and washed up, I paced, smoked cigarettes, drank and blogged as Obama became the president elect. I worried about upcoming speaking events, money, trips and death. And I cried along with the rest of a nation, although probably not for the same reasons.