ALBUQUERQUE LULLABY
Duerme Mamá – sleep my mother, I whisper as I
adjust your covers at Desert Sage. I look at your
pale, wrinkled face. My calloused hand touches your
thin soft-snow hair as the radio softly plays the
música you have always loved, mariachis who
sing of lost love, the dove’s tender feathers and
fragile hope. As you quietly snore, I stare out the
window at the traffic on San Mateo and think of
two lifetimes. I want you to come home to live with
us, but I worry. Will the ones with power over you,
with briefcases and typed documents, say I am not
a good son because of these scars? Because of where
I have been, who I used to be?
You are fast asleep but I hesitate to leave. I take
your weak hand into mine and remember how hard
this hand worked to keep me fed and clean and safe,
especially after Papi died and how I later hurt you
with my selfish choices. But I am here now. I listen
to you breathe and I smile sadly as I hear the lullabies
you used to sing to me, arrorró mi nino, arrorró mijo...
I lift your withered hand to my rough cheek but
gently so I do not wake you. I look at the clock. I
cannot stay because they are waiting for me, those who
will judge me, who will decide in black and white
if they believe that I have changed enough that we
might share a home together until God takes you.
Past the window I see Sandia Mountain, its deep
shadows as stark and beautiful as Mt. Sinai. Seeing
it makes me tremble for it reminds me of my failure,
that I did not before understand that you are sacred
to me. I must not cry. The sun shifts to orange in a
sky painted with streaks of pink and turquoise. Even
if you do not hear me, I can still whisper I love you,
Mamá into your sleeping ears, even as I say I love you
to the sky as it deepens into the colors that look just
like your soul; colors that speak of miracles and that
feed my weary faith when it falters, and that make
me so happy that, despite my mistakes, despite what
those strangers think of me, I am here for you now.
Brian Yapko is a lawyer whose poems have appeared in multiple publications His debut novel, El Nuevo Mundo, was recently published by Rebel Satori Press. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.