Tres Años

Three years ago you died. Without words, you called me home. You waited.
 
I washed you. I’d never seen your naked body. But I washed you - like a nurse, like a mother, a midwife, washing the newborn. I didn’t know it’d be your last bath but then your breath shifted and I knew. I got dad and Ada and after an hour or so, you exhaled for your last time.
 
You were there when I inhaled my first time.
 
It’s weird you’re not here.
 
I told you, before it was true, that I was okay. I told you before I knew for sure, that I was well. I believed it at the time, but hot damn, I really didn’t know what was around the corner …. The hell that I’d live through, coming back from your grave and mine.
 
I live, mom. I’m breathing a breath that’s giving back to me now.
 
I’ve had lovers I’d wished you’d met and others you’d wish I hadn’t. I can’t believe how much life goes into one life. How much story, rhyme, and wrongs.
 
Poetry has rekindled my fire, and leather…. skin to touch, caress, and burn. You won’t meet my children, but I might not either.
 
I wait, I wonder, I stay, I care. I’m here. You’re not, but your stories, mama, they live.
 
I think of you on that stallion. Fierce. Loyal. Awake.
 
Just like me.
 
I still love flowers in my hair. The more fragrant the better. I’ll plant more this year, in the ground and in my hair. I promise.
 
Mami, sometimes I wish you’d come back.
 
But then I wouldn’t have this day – this day to say it’s the day you left your body.
 
I wouldn’t have the memory of your last breath. Or of dad, leaning over you, kissing you, stroking your hair, telling you his last words of love, passion, and caressing you in a way I’d never seen before. If you were here, maybe the love between the two of you would still be a hidden mystery.
 
I wouldn’t have walked those miles with your dust.
 
I wouldn’t have known that your you, is my me.
 
If you were here, I wouldn’t have you in the sky and in the sea. I wouldn’t have you in my lost blood.
 
You’d be locked in time.
 
Death defies time. It stops and stretches it.
 
That’s where I am.
 
Timeless, embracing time. Calling it to me. Saying yes. Stepping in.
 
I’m the fruit of your labor, laboring in my own field of flames.
 
Thank you. Thank you.
 
Thank

You.

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