Janel Pineda
Keep a son from his mother until her last breath.
When she goes, all she’ll know of him is desert
heat, folded letters, a phantom of his sixteen-year-old self outside
her nursing home window, unable to come inside. Venite,
Chepito, venite. If he could, he’d leave the gang, leave the gun,
come home. Venite. If he could, he’d disappear the war,
his father’s strike, his father’s stroke. If he could, he’d
pick a different place, a different time, free his hands
of any crime, of any charge. When he goes, all he’ll know
of her is the faint fatigue of her voice, her full name tattooed
beneath his throat. When he goes, all he’ll know of life is
every inch of a cell, the way the decades flew by, and how he was made
to rot, alone.
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