I sigh with the breath of history
Searching for the meaning of your life in antiquity
***
Born in the late 1920s
Your life armed by revolutionary code
Even though you missed the fight
Living under entropy of PRI hegemon
Banished from the divine agency of the miracle
Forced to pocket the peso crisis
Debt laid expensed on you
You watched
global markets
domesticate democracy
in your home
Did you see the solidarity of political pragmatism’s promise to buffer neoliberal reform?
Were you mad at the capital flight that took your daughter
when she felt
Pal Norte Syndrome
***
I wonder if you cared about politics
Did you petition your government for services
Breaking the indifference of party paternalism
Did you believe your vote weighed
or did you suspect
regime legitimatizing
ritualistic cynicism at play
***
You watched life modernize
Incrementally
Witnessing PAN and Fox rejoice in victory
But you didn’t see it all the way
***
I wish I would’ve known you better
Did you question your identity
Or did survival always determine your expression
Was your imagination blocked complacent
I like to imagine your dreams and aspirations
***
I wonder if you were close to your mother
and if you wish your bond was stronger with your daughter
Did you carry me in your arms as a toddler?
***
I wonder if you had friends
If you believed in your Santo
Did you pray on harder days?
I wonder what you’d think today
What you would think of me
***
I think about the pain you felt
Growing tired of the cards dealt
I wonder what ropa ajena you washed over lavaderos knelt
***
I wonder if you hid in your home
to escape judgment of being a single mother
I wonder if you thought of aborting my mother
How did you reveal you were with child
You were in your 30s, did you have independence?
Most of your life passed with no children dependents
Did motherhood call something to you
Did you crave to pass on your love or did you want to leave a legacy
Did you keep my mom from knowing about her anonymous father regrettably
I wonder if a romance began
Or simply a bawdy well deserved pleasure that got the best of you
But we suspect he was an aggressor
Abused you like your body was leather
Then I cry for you
***
I can imagine your pain
A bodily and emotional stain
Blunted by the raw deal
In every way
***
I wonder if you knew that this picture would freeze a captured moment
That I would use it to remember you and write this poem
Today I cry for your unknown life Abue
All the things you kept unspoken
Like a golden peso, you floated
with curves of volatile crisis cast on you
I read you between the lines of history books
Suddenly you feel at arms-length
I can feel your love and strength
You are the true Mexican Miracle
History dispensed
J.Mar
Pictured is Abue and (Grand)Tio who helped raise Ama.
JMar 