Aleida Yolanda Feijoso Garcia died on a sticky summer night at the end of June
Shouted her sister's name in surprise and then gargled on the humid sweat of a penultimate breath
I was driving too fast with the windows wide the first time I heard my old man cry
He told me that she was gone and I told him that she was only everywhere and everything for always now
He used the bite of whiskey to bite back at something bigger in those days
That night we poured what remained of the bottle into porcelain cups of cafecito, their handles so carelessly fragile in our fingertips
We stitched a vigil from stories and scotch until her body bled all its borrowed warmth back into the world
I let all that love tattoo its teeth on me
When it was my turn for courage to call me over, her friable palms were parchment paper in my own
I wanted to press them to my eyes and see straight through her skin; hoping maybe this was what the medicine woman meant when she said that some of us stand closer to the veil
My daddy’s umber eyes were as glassy as the pond he showed me how to skate on when grief broke its back on him
His voice cracked loud as a burning pine knot the moment he realized her cheek was now just as cold
At the funeral, all the tias scolded my tears and let strength peck rouge stains in their stead
The verses were all read in words from two places and I thought that maybe this is all that separates us from here and there; a barrier of understanding
We buried her bulb in the ground; our white gloves clinging to the coffin like beggars
Give us one more raucous crow of joy or orderly pile of twigs plucked from the yard brushed hard as wet hair, just one more swaying spoonful of flan to melt slow and sweet in our mouths
The only place we had left then was the woods
I watched my papa wade his way upstream to where our waterfall rained copper coins on moss; the things that make stone soft and still the only wealth I've really cared to know
My father knelt like a wounded knight in the rush that parses here and there and I wondered
Maybe this was what the medicine woman meant when she said love can reach across the veil we all belong beyond
I sat enchanted in the soil and studied him, soaked through to the bone with reverence, as something so much more than brook water washed all that weariness away
His umber eyes were clear when they again met mine.