If I sit at the table with the sapphire cloth,
bullets scarring the lane to abuelita’s
door will not pierce six veins.
If the day and the un/day drift
above the striped blanket, her jade
cup on the pine shelf will not shatter.
The jagged sun has been shot
out of the sky. Perhaps the gods
wait to permit dusk’s unweaving.
Now the coral house fastens
to if as three sisters watch at eyeless
windows. How many miles to midnight
where men in cotton armor enter room after
room and mirrors melt with what they remove—
a splaying of limbs, this falling of hearts? If
I hide in my skin, then Lupe y Engracia
will float high above hills of the young maize.
If I take in flesh like nahual snakes, let
them plow me into scorched earth,
Ixchel, sweet moon goddess, arrays us
in copper innocence, and we soar
as ringdoves from our sky cages. All this,
if bodies burn indigo, if men birth such stillness,
our resurrected finally speak, wordless.