curls. (revised)

her curls become sunset when she frolics into the shade and it frightens him. like penultimate Hemingway, he can’t stand to confront the inevitable ~~pain~~ that lies near.

is it over already? the beginnin’. gold fades to orange like an over-worn oxford. curls wrap her ear like a secret and release the tawny flecks of her irises to overwhelm surroundin’ skies. your eyes look like sunset.

grins chuckles slices of hand. can’t ignore it. ringlets of fire burn stroma pierce retina. grabs a spool and allows it to spiral his finger. proximity stings but he ignores it. tan and white. bronze & gold.

october eyes starlit skies. grass exposes invasion of night. projections changin’ perspective. sparkles ignite flames in diaphragm, scorchin’ his pasture spring. lungs charred by smoky skies cloudy eyes. peers upward for relief finds grief.

twilight. a crimson horizon in disguise. stars gone but the moon ridin’. rides light waves til he drowns in abundance. asphyxiated by a love he can’t summon. nowhere to go after sunset if the stars can’t guide. nowhere to go after sunset if the stars in her eyes.

confusion > pain. four w’s and an h loopin’ his mind like a first kiss. ensnarin’ it. pops would be ashamed to witness this were he present. never was. he’ll claim unaffected til metaphor becomes reality and the sun don’t set no more cause time will have dipped too. endless time. time endless.

don’t let time end this.

curls.

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her curls become sunset when she frolics into the shade and it frightens him. like penultimate Hemingway, he can’t stand to confront the inevitable ~~pain~~ that lies near.

is it over already? the beginning. gold fades to orange like an over-worn oxford. curls wrap her ear like a secret and release the tawny flecks of her irises to overwhelm surrounding skies. your eyes look like sunset.

confusion > pain. four w’s and an h looping his mind like a first kiss. ensnaring it. pops would be ashamed to witness this were he present. never was. he’ll claim unaffected until metaphor becomes reality and the sun don’t set no more cause time will have dipped too. endless time. time endless.

don’t let time end this.

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life’s dropout

I been thinking bout my trajectory lately. A lot. How strange it is to use word, let alone experience it in its intended meaning. Talked about it all with several people this past week. Didn’t intend to, it just sorta came outta me, another substance my body’s yearned to expel. Altogether natural and toxic in large quantities, when held onto for too long.

Last week Stephanie told me about a doc called “Dropout Nation.” It followed four shorties at a high school in Houston that’s considered a “dropout factory.” A place where hope ain’t nothing but a concept. Like equal rights or the american Dream. These shorties epitomize struggle. Deportations homelessness gang violence mental disorders teenage pregnancy. What it means to be of color in the hood. Watching ’em struggle through school and life brought a mist to my eyes which I held back, resisting the urge to pour a tribute to ’em in the teachers’ lounge. In an institution that couldn’t save ’em. Barely saved me. One I possess a lack of faith in most days. Part of me wished for my eyes to bleed so that the pain might finally subside, rid itself from my being, so that the shorties could witness me feel for ’em, so that I could blind myself from their woes. Their reality. The reality that links me directly to the past I often neglect yet seldom forget.

There are moments when life seems dreamlike. Fantastical. When the sun shines with the ideal intensity of mid-spring. The wind blows a soft whisper into the day, tickling your fancy enough to keep you longing curious optimistic. Trees dance along to its tunes, secrets. Everything’s perfect. When I’m sipping with friends, dining with kicks, locking eyes with someone potential. Everything’s right. I don’t think of the pain sorrow or sadness. The loss struggle and regret. I think up schemes to prevent the present’s demise, my inevitable descent into the past.

Lately that’s meant creating elastic of my being, stretching myself so far so thin that my essence is no longer discernible. A spider’s web, transparent yet fully active. Purposeful. Long nights, daily dinner drinks cafe, expending the final droplets of energy I possess for others to feel as though they’re connecting with me. Throwing all my funding at halfhearted social interactions to convince myself of my life’s merit. To ignore incessant murmurs of failure, dropout, phony, death. Whenever I’m asked about my key to success, the inspiration for my escape, I fall back on my mantra.

once you stop running you start dying

And so I don’t. I go until my lungs quiver, remaining traces of oxygen desperately grasping reaching for life, til the saliva loses its grip on my tongue and evaporates, til my knees buckle back stiffens heart bursts. Then I go some more. I sprint toward a goal, an end I can’t conjure imagine except I always can. Vividly. I know exactly how it looks.

It looks like those shorties lives and possibly their futures. I can’t say I finished the doc and so I don’t know how they wound up. Couldn’t stand to witness some of them fail. Already know that story. Seen enough of it. Maybe you’ll watch it and tell me someday. Maybe you’ll care enough. Have hope. Maybe. You will.

I know exactly how it looks. My end. At least how it’s meant to, which leads to my enduring disbelief of the current continuous moment. In Madrid, San Augustin del Guadalix writing this shit as I sip te negro suenos de canela. In Chamberi linking several times a week for drinks lunch dinner. Sometimes remaining platonic, extending glances across the bar the table, subtle smirks preceding sips of blanco de la casa. It’s nice, lovely in itself but it’s what happens most nights that perplexes me. Rattles my brain. Fucks my perception of life up.

I used to play house with my siblings as a shortie, constructing forts with the three levels of our bunk bed, occasionally throwing a chair in the mix to alter its structure and functionality. We’d birth wild scenarios during these sessions. Dinners downtown, on the mystic blue overlooking the pier. Millions of tiny lights warping through fiery windows, applauding us for a wonderful night a wonderful life. Aperitifs outside quaint parisian cafes. You and your lover sneaking gentle pecks between mouthfuls of buttery flaky croissants. Some street musician hoping to make a quick euro serenading you through an untuned saxophone. Nico laughed at me for enacting that, pretending to kiss Gabrielle with a full mouth, swishing a non-wine in my hand cause I saw some motherfucker do it in a movie. He laughed because I looked ridiculous but also because it wasn’t attainable, realistic. We never left our neighborhood, let alone chicago for real adventure. Hadn’t the slightest motherfucking clue where paris was, how to get there. What aperitif meant, how to sip it and inhale its aromas simultaneously without seeming like you were trying to experience it. Just experiencing. Life love contentedness. Freedom. We knew the vague premise of a dream, what it meant to possess and desire one, but never how to pursue it obtain it. Wild scenarios.

We never believed the pictures we painted would manifest themselves in reality then or now. The idea of a good happy prosperous life was as clear as a walk home from school was. As straightforward as they seemed internally, externally they proved to be thick as an iowa haze in mid november. A storm without rain. When analyzing the impediments of the disenfranchised outsiders tend to neglect the minutiae. Walkin to and from school ain’t simply liftin your feet mechanically n linkin wit homies along the way, a few locals smilin and wavin you off for a spectacular day. It could be that but it often wasn’t. Shoulder checks, deep breaths, calculated posture, precise pivot of step, curated gaze. Everything was performed with the intended purpose and goal of remaining neutral while implying a willingness to fight if necessary. Your hands were readily available for whoever possessed the guile to test you whenever. That survival often implies dipping through the first gangway but often ain’t always. You ain’t always gon run. The minutiae makes a person a circumstance.

At this point in my life minutiae seems like a labyrinth of what was what was supposed to be and what is. It’s exhausting attempting to work through it all while also maintaining a healthy amount of sadness. I know I’m always gonna be sad but it doesn’t have to occupy a primary space in my mind. I can whittle it down into something manageable and maybe someday destroy it altogether. That terrifies me, existing without sadness. Possessing in mind a clear picture of life, where I’d like to go and how to get there. Being open with myself and others. Loving someone while extending to them the possibility of knowing and loving me wholly. Being free and able and willing. I’m willing to try but the shit scares me. Leaves my equilibrium in a funk, my lungs tight.

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Crimson tears descended from your lips the day we met, seamlessly blending with the contents of your mug.

Would you like some, you asked.

I prefer mine with milk.

Blood is life’s milk, milk for the soul, you said pressing the mug to my lips. For a second–no, much briefer than that–I imagined it to be your lips, plump as fully ripened berries, trickling sweet nectar onto mine.

I placed my hand on the mug, tremulously inching my pinky toward yours. And what if you’ve already given me life, I asked.

Looking deeply into the chasm of my irises, you said: You’d have to have lived first. For yourself. You’d have to have lived for yourself.

I ain’t worth living for. Not today. Today, I only wanna to live for you.

Pulling the mug from my lips, you sipped the remainder of your coffee and walked out the cafe, into the rain. No goodbye. Your tears washed away by those of the sky. Your tears washed away by those of my eyes.

You.

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I thought of you the other day. Well, spoke of you. I guess the lies should stop now that I’m coming to terms with things. Now that you’ve unfurled from the attic of my psyche, damp and unwelcome. It’s not that I don’t want you. No. It simply hurts too much to be with you. That’s what Luz Emilia told me. She’s my landlady, the person who convinced me you were worth talking about. She didn’t pry or insist, it just came out of me. Some people possess that ability: seamless extraction of emotions doubts and insecurities.

What began as a conversation about travels education and life goals quickly became an abridged autobiography. We talked about Ma and Papi and how she was there and how he wasn’t. About Ma’s fists and how they greeted you more than her lips did, kissing your cheeks and forehead and arms and stomach with tremendous passion. How Papi Bucky and Dave embraced her in the same way, how it must’ve been love. How you used to hide in corners and press your ears to the wall, listening for anything, a single exhale of Ma’s frail breath to assure you of her survival. How you never talked and only listened because words meant pain and you weren’t sure you could withstand more. How, at 13, I snuck a knife into the bathroom and nearly slit our throat before Apple knocked on the door. How I didn’t die that day. How you did.

Luz brought you back to life in a way. She told me that she imagines me being someone important, someone special one day but not before I tend to you. You, the boy who wasn’t allowed to be. You, the boy I wanted to be but couldn’t. You, the boy I was forced to deny in exchange for survival. You, the boy who dreamt of Mars and Paris and dinners with beautiful women and a million dollars so that you Nico Apple Malik and Ma could live in one home and never have to move again. You, who wished for the ability to fly, to escape to any part of this world or another without ever having to return.

I’ve since escaped the hood, the abuse, Chicago, the United States. But I can’t escape you. I’m not sure I want to. For so long, all I wanted was to breathe, to believe myself worthy of love and affection and care and happiness. But we couldn’t be happy together. The world was against us from the start. That’s undeniable. You were too quiet, too shy, too anxious, too skinny, too ugly, too weak. At least that’s what they told me.

They wanted me to despise you. And I did. Sometimes I still do. I’m embarrassed to showcase you to the world, in fear that they might see the scars I’ve left behind. That they might learn of the punches I sent your way whenever something seemed to go vaguely wrong. Of the conversations we had in front of mirrors, pretending to have a friend or lover that cared. About the cross-dressing–attempts at discovering beauty–sneaking Ma’s clothes into the bathroom for our personal enlightenment. We didn’t know what we were, but we knew we had each other. At least, I knew I had you.

I ain’t gonna waste time calling myself unworthy, because we both know it’s true. I don’t deserve you. I thought running from our past, your past, would save me. Grant me life anew. Even if that meant losing all I knew to be true. One doesn’t have to consider the impact of pain once they’ve convinced themselves of its irrelevance. Once they believe it doesn’t exist, or ceases to exist, the pain disappears, evaporates like aged tears. Right? If that’s true, why can’t I get rid of you? Why couldn’t I?

I promise this ain’t intentional. I want you near but what am I to do when society’s in my ear, perpetuating every fear that brought us here? What am I to do with the ten years lost since I abandoned you? What am I do with the memories nightmares smiles frowns laughs cries hellos and goodbyes? I don’t wanna say goodbye no more. Would you accept hello? Would you listen to me like you did before? Would you believe me if I said I loved you? Would you believe me if I said I still do? Would you hug me if I reached out? Would you wipe away the tears resuscitated by the shame I feel for neglecting you? Would you? Can you? Please? Randy? Can you?

Please.

Homecoming or (the sound of your smile)

Fireworks went off

at homecoming

and I searched frantically

to see if my brother

got shot coming home.

II.

You don’t leave the hood but

runaway before that strap

renders you another day

another shortie cast astray

another shortie caught a stray

what a shame

it brings me pain

to hear your name

who’s to blame?

I run away before

they yell my name.

III.

Bangs and pops

the screams won’t stop

reverberating like echoes

of a life taken before I could let go

the sound of your smile fills my tears

as I think about the years

we lived in fear of an outcome far too near

you ain’t gone

but you may as well be

that slug changed you

despite what you tell me

I’m at fault

mackin’ on campus

as that strap brought you to a halt

engaging in empty relationships

while you were left to take the hit

we’re all destined for inevitably.

IV.

I don’t regret shooting you

the second time

a slug pierced your body

deceptively fast

its ramifications fucking your shit up

for days weeks months years

I warned you of their cunning nature

like a cancer

constantly knocking at the door.

I never respond

the pounding has become a symphony

thrusting me into a slumber

during which it fills the void of those

dreams I long ago suppressed

I prefer to think of you and

the times we smiled seem distant

as the skyline in the nighttime

tiny windows glimmering amidst large

expanses of darkness

the mileage between seemingly insurmountable.

Some nights I imagine you

drowning in the neighborhood pool

your arm extended for salvation

mine attempting rescue

yours wrenching me into

tainted waters

mine flailing for survival

then I remember

salvation is self induced.

Ruby-Red

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Alana.

Mi hermanita hermosa, te extraño con una profundidad solo encontrada en el núcleo de mi corazón, la raíz de mi alma. During nights like these, when a light rain patters against my cheeks, a cool breeze tickling my flesh, I think of you. I think of days spent at the lakefront, hanging our feet from the edge of a stone-bed with hopes the waves would crash just high enough to wet our toes, kiss our ankles. I think of rolled ice cream and the gobs of chocolate you somehow managed to transfer from the spoon to your chin. I think of Pitch Perfect 3 and dark theaters and prequel synopses in the form of not so soft whispers.

I wasn’t sure what you meant to me the day you were born. Or the month after, even the year. I was thirteen and, honestly, convinced I wouldn’t be alive much longer. That’s the truth. You don’t yet know about the things I’ve gone through seen or done. I try my best to keep them from you, shoving the cork so deep into the bottle you’d have to shatter it to release its contents. No, you don’t need to know. Not yet. You deserve to live, to run around a park aimlessly, your only concern being the sustainability of your breath, your flow of oxygen. Where you’ll gather it, how. You propel oxygen through my lungs, which conflate like balloons, sending me soaring through our fragile atmospheres.

My fragile atmospheres.

You’d never believe it, but you’re the first person to make me feel beautiful. Like a human. All my life I’ve been told I’m too skinny, too quiet to be trusted, that I have el pelo malo, that I’m not dark enough to be black, light enough to be a real Puerto Rican. But I’ve always been good enough to be your brother. To you, my hair isn’t a question but an answer, a declaration: curly, frizzy, beautiful. I remember one night, five years ago, when you entered the living room with a shitty little metal comb that was made for dolls with razor straight hair, thin as my confidence. You wanted to comb my hair. That won’t work on me, I said. But you insisted and ran it through anyway, reviving the fro I’d hidden for years with number 2 fades and excessive amounts of keratin gel.

See, you said, now you look pretty.

My hair’s never been pretty.

I think it is, you said as you played with the curls springing from the back of my neck. That’s when I knew I’d been gifted a gem in the form of you.

Ruby.

About a month ago, when Gurshran and I were visiting for a weekend, you asked why I didn’t smile more. Gurshran smiles a lot, you said, I think she loves me more than you do…

Those words broke my heart, shattered it into many tiny fragments. My eyes well at the notion that it may be true, that I may lead a life sans love for you. Moments like those encapsulate the depth of my insecurities. Those which prevent me from truly bonding with you. Around you I rarely showcase anger or discontentment, because I’m afraid to be the malicious men of our childhoods. During our walks to Baskin’ Robbins or Roeser’s for ice cream, I commit 40% of my attention to you and 60% to the outside world, the hood, my predetermined graveyard. A car might turn the corner too quickly, a hand might reach too close, a strap might dodge my peripherals and launch a bullet in our direction. I was raised on hyper-caution and anxiety. Anytime your hand leaves mine and you linger behind my mind unwinds into the chasm gifted me by my mother over time.

You’re always asking why I leave so often. Why I have to study in different cities states and countries. Why I prefer distance over proximity. I say that I need to for school, that the internships are for my future career, that seeing other countries allows me to understand ours better, us better. This is all true but, for years, I just wanted to escape. I wanted to run until my breath ran out, until my lungs collapsed, until my heart plunged into my stomach and disintegrated in its acids. I wanted to see if someone would attempt to revive me. I wanted to know if anyone cared. I never once considered that you might; the thought never entered my mind. Not until I went to Iowa and realized that resuscitation is self-induced. An unwilling person can never be revived. While my person had died, my spirit had begun anew, birthed from the embers you stoke in the pits of my heart.

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If you were to ask me now, I’d tell you what I tell your mother and Gurshran constantly: I do this for you, so that you can experience a world much grander, much lovelier than I ever knew or will know. I travel the world with hopes that the rapid palpitations of my heart, a byproduct of all the wonderful sights sounds and smells, will thrust you into a fervor, the rhythm exciting your body and mind like a swift bachata. I scream and cry and laugh and smile and run and leap so that your ladder may have an additional rung, support.

I hate being away from you as much as you hate my being gone. I do. My longing for your presence often leads me to tears. It’s leading me there now. Not being by your side, conversing with you about hockey and drawing and bullies and movies and boring math assignments pains me. Calling you once every week or every other week isn’t enough. But I know that you know my love is true.

I know you don’t actually believe that I don’t love you, or that my girlfriend holds a greater love and appreciation for you than I do. I know, but my heart doesn’t. And I hate it because it’s you who fills my heart with life. That’s why I’ll protect you over anyone or anything, why I’ll forever enclose the embers of my soul in the cache of my aorta. So if ever you find yourself in doubt, peer closely at the tears of my heart and see that they bleed ruby-red for you.

Santiago.

My ex girlfriend once called you my half-sister and I nearly ended the relationship. That decision might seem rash but, as my logic went at the time, if she couldn’t understand the profoundness of my love for you and how it extended beyond a simple lineal connection, then she couldn’t quite understand me.

I don’t quite understand me or how I can be deserving of someone so precious as you. Luck is the only explanation: we both happened to share the same father and so happened to bond as a result of that same father’s absence. His role in our relationship sickens me.

My one wish for you as a child and throughout your entire life has been that you don’t suffer in the same way that I have. Our father occupied one of those avenues for me. He was less a father and more an enigma, a ghost, an apparition that appeared periodically but tactfully exited before anyone could notice. You’ll always have a stronger connection to him than I will and, in some ways, I envy you for that; for others, I don’t. You’ll always remember the cool father who made milkshakes and pizzas and popped in a Red-box for movie nights–marathons of Studio Gibli and Star Trek and Transformers–the father who smiled when you giggled and frowned when you sobbed. You’ll always remember the Disney World’s and Happy Meals and Barnum and Bailey’s. But you’ll also remember that, after 7 years, he left.

He left. He left you and I’ll never forgive him for it. There were moments in my life when I thought I could forgive him for leaving me Frankie Miguel Scarlett Nico Malik and Apple behind, moments when I believed that he was genuinely working toward the betterment of our relationship. But, like him, those moments came few and far between. Even still, I never found myself to hate him; not until he left you.

People will come and go from your life with the frequency of traffic on the Dan Ryan. I’ve learned it’s inevitable. But, Alana Ruby Santiago, ember of my soul, gem of my heart don’t you ever convince yourself that you’re not worthy of love appreciation adoration or commitment. Alana Ruby Santiago, don’t ever entertain the thought, the fear that I may leave and never return. Alana Ruby Santiago, remember that no matter how far the distance between us may seem, I’m always near, in the nest of your heart and you in mine. Te amo tremendamente, mi hermanita hermosa.

abuelo? is it too late to call?

a week since rigor mortis forced its acquaintance

yet my mind remains awake

recycling the dead tones you bequeathed me

generational heirlooms cast ashore by the Santa Maria or

Isabella or

whichever saint was used to justify the whips that lashed

your abuelo’s abuelo’s abuelo’s abuelo

echoes of infinite demise piercing our psyches

a month since you left, yet I’m still scrambling to finish this shitty poem. fumbling the words and clumped tears that linger about my cornea–isolated images of you. reminders of bodegas con helado de coco or jam sessions in the park or endless reruns of abbott and costello or john coltrane serenading the room as you talked about your transformation from drugs to holy man family man damaged man.

i’m damaged, man. i mean… abuelo? how am i supposed to smile at the past when you’re not present? scratch my forehead after a furry kiss? of all the people i left back home, you’re the one i truly miss. i should’ve called when you asked, yelled out your name. lately, i can only sob with shame. should i rhyme it out or talk it through? my heart feels pain when i think of you. abuelo, you ain’t a question no more. fuck blood, your spirit rests deep in the core of a heart i’m not sure i ever had before.

there are certain people not meant for us, not meant for this world, those whose souls transcend beyond the boundaries of dilapidated streets and luminescent skylines and insecure borders and crumbling atmospheres. there are people who live to die so that they might finally discover purpose elsewhere. i would say you never existed here but, aside from its falsehood, it would be too painful to imagine. like the news of your premature death, greeting me on a facebook newsfeed.

had i called like you asked, i might’ve known that your infection had gotten worse. that the cirrhosis overcame your liver. that yours and cancer’s acquaintance became more comfortable than our own. but, again, any such knowledge would’ve been too painful to imagine and i didn’t deserve it anyhow.

i still remember the day i got an ear infection in high school, sophomore year. after we left the hospital, ma left to work and i chilled at your crib. one minute we were prepping sandwiches, the next you popped a technicolor porn into the vhs. a few people were fucking on a boat, over some random body of water, their bodies flowing in a manner ma warned me against. don’t tell your mother, you said, it’s just between us men. you were trying to bond, but i was uncomfortable. not with the video but with the notion of connection. i never had an abuelo and i wasn’t sure i wanted one. men only seemed to hurt me my mother my siblings and accepting one into my life would’ve rendered my demise inevitable.

pseudo-abuelo, that’s what i called you until the news broke. pseudo-abuelo was the precursor of a lengthy explanation as to why you couldn’t be my real abuelo. pseudo-abuelo was the armor i wore every time you stocked our empty pantry with groceries, illegally ran cables across buildings to keep electricity in our apartment. pseudo-abuelo was the stratagem i employed to dodge a furry kiss, to deny connections to the man who lost four toes one morning after getting too drunk the night before. pseudo-abuelo was the ruse i used to refuse the love i had for you. pseudo-abuelo wasn’t you.

abuelo?

typhoons overwhelm my tear ducts when i think of you. so i reserve such thoughts for the night-time, when i can close the shutters and sob into a pillow, which i imagine to be your shoulder accepting the 135 lb apology that is me. i’m sorry is all i can say before my lungs begin their descent into my stomach. swallowing air, words never show. i like to think you’re shoving a stopgap through my trachea before i can finish, reminding me that your love wasn’t so fickle. i like to think that we’ll meet again in a dream or two and find ourselves in a madrid cafe, bebiendo una caña. i like to think that, someday, i’ll forget to wake and spend the rest of my days floating amidst the stars with you–at ease.

i don’t really want to go but i also don’t want you to leave. spend one more night with me and tell the story of how you met bucky on that roof top, straps pulled, domes in the cross-hairs. spend one more night with me and remind me how you pushed enough weight to register as a millionaire. spend one more night with me and declare the magnificence of abuela’s arroz con habichuelas. spend one more night with abuela, she yearns for you. spend one more night with ma, you’re the one good man she knew. spend one more night with us, i promise the love’ll be true.

abuelo? are you there?

is it too late to call?

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a week since rigor mortis forced its acquaintance

yet my mind remains awake

recycling the dead tones you bequeathed me

generational heirlooms cast ashore by the Santa Maria or

Isabella or

whichever saint was used to justify the whips that lashed

your abuelo’s abuelo’s abuelo’s abuelo

echoes of infinite demise piercing our psyches

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