Leaving
Chinatown
Slicing a mango to share between us, your
mother
smiles at the grinning fool I've become,
pours me
more and more wine. You’re working
late uptown.
Green platanos searing in oil,
saffron rice boiling,
black beans simmer with sofrito,
chili, red onion
until steam clouds the room, tasting of
salt,
wetting my eyes. What lies between us
feels thin
as this mist, as strange. How real is
it? When she takes
my face in her hands as she would open
a fruit,
her ravaged voice cutting through me,
I see her
as she must have been once, afraid of
nothing—long before
she fell in love with your father, a man
who shattered
what he touched, who left her eyes galled
by all the other
faces, like yours, she might have looked
into with love.
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