inspired by “Young Carlos”, an article by Alexandra Starr from the Sept. 8 edition of New York Magazine.
i.
I wanted to fly like those scarlet macaos
we used to chase through the trees—
instead, I jumped onto the train as fast as I could
and watched as the slower ones hit the tracks,
recognizing the same eyes, the same faces
I had just walked with, breathed with,
shattering into red and then nothing.
I closed my eyes and imagined that they
had flown away, red feathers bright
against the rusty grey of railings and box cars.
el tren de la muerte, we called it.
I didn’t die that day. I kept wondering later
if I should have.
(I should have.)
ii.
the border was different. there was a quiet in the air
that I had never stood under in Honduras, a quiet
that simmered between tensed bodies and bated
breath, a quiet that crept under my skin, wormed its way
into my head, reminded me that I had to get out—
I had to keep going.
iii.
when I finally did get off of the bus, the maras took all I had—
the paper bills hidden beneath crumpled water bottles,
a single change of clothes, the oranges I was saving
for the rest of the week—everything, except the tiny tallado
that my mother had pressed into my palm at the station.
they were gone and I stood alone, my pockets emptied.
weeks later I stood with my forehead pressed against
the dirty walls of a back room, the silence almost as heavy,
as uncomfortable as it had been at the border.
for ten long seconds, I thought the gangs had gotten me at last—
perhaps I would finally die over money I didn’t have,
alone and so far from home.
I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable—
but it never came.
all of the pressure disappeared, and down I went,
tumbling onto the floor in a state of dazed relief.
by some mad stroke of luck my captor had recognized
my traveling companion, and I was free.
my pockets were even emptier than before, but I didn’t feel
half as bad about it, then.
iv.
on the day I turned seventeen I woke to see the flames
rising up the side of the bridge, the silhouette of a body
barely visible, smoke mixing with the pungent smell of burning flesh—
my eyes watered until I was blinded by smoke and tears, tears
and smoke, choking on the dawn.
and then—la migra!—came the panicked cry from my left—
I didn’t even turn to see them coming. I ran until I could not,
and then I walked, walked until I could not.
v.
I arrived in the desert half a year after
I left Honduras, and once again, I walked.
I walked until I could not, until the sand and the road and the blinding sun
exploded, melted, bent, diverged—
until I could almost feel my father beside me, a hand
around my shoulder, like he had always been there with my mother
and I, like he had never been.
the yellow lines should have been straight.
I knew this, but still they twisted, turned,
distorted by the heat, the lack of water,
and the images that were beginning to leak into my thoughts,
winding and whirling like sand across asphalt.
the wind blew towards me the smell of things long dead,
things left unburied in the Arizona summer.
for a moment I thought that I, too,
would be left unburied, dead or not really,
in the Arizona sun.
the steady humming of the white van came twenty days in,
and I welcomed it despite the menacing green band
that snaked its way around its exterior.
BORDER PATROL, it read.
I did not have to know English to know what that meant.
vi.
I had never met mi abuela before, but here I was, at the window
of a Bronx apartment, looking down at yet another city street.
“you remind me of your father,” she said, looking up at me,
and I wondered, briefly, if that was supposed to be a good thing.
I supposed she was right; we had the same face, except that I
didn’t reek of alcohol, and I didn’t have a family to abandon.
but then I thought of my mother back home
and how it had been seven and a half months since I had last
seen her—since I had last heard her voice—
and suddenly I felt very sick.
vii.
the noise in this city is so different.
the garbled languages converged as they slipped through my ears,
rolling off my tongue as if I had been born to straddle the line
between English and Spanish,
American and not.
when I opened the letter, the words snaked into lines, straight
and neat and perfect. I stood in the courthouse later, clutching the letter
with shaking hands, pretending that it didn’t feel like I was all the way back
in San Pedro Sula, like the time they shot my friend right on the crosswalk,
like the week I hid in my aunt’s house to hide from the cartels, like the time
the bullet pierced my knee and—
the courtroom was cold like the hieleras they put me in
after that sweltering walk through the desert.
six months, the judge told me.
six months, and I could be back home—
(could I still call it that?)
waiting for a stray bullet.
