summa cum laude
Your
therapist said she wanted you dead, but mother rarely treated you
badly. She made a lot of mistakes like neurons misfiring or father getting lost in the forest. Lobelia
grew out of oak trees, and howler monkeys walked across a land bridge
while jaguars bred in dry season watching toucans feeding insects to
their young. You are a woman with army ants crawling in your hair. You
are a woman who rode to Cañas
on a bus with 5 campesinos
and
a lizard salesman traveling to Santa Rosa before father baked paca
and rice for mother who bought tortillas at the cantina, circuits alive and hot as tarmac in Summer—black and viscous
as lake silt. Father hid in mother's closet—her silks touching
his cheeks, her scent seductive like Inga
flowers—xanthous as her skin at dawn when gray sunlight reminded him
of the last time he felt joy.
You build fembots.
Life
is unfair and unstable.
Coloreds speak Danish.
