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She’s never quiet when anything is terrible but she takes true sadness when she can’t comfort pain. Going from EM nurse to project manager and hacker around the world, she’s lived her life to the fullest. Her bright green eyes, she says are German, against her African brown hair, look so beautiful. Today, she is dictating my exercise routine and I sit quietly and listen. Tomorrow, she will have 7 pound tumor taken from inside her viscera in a 5 hour surgery. One of many in the year to come. Sometimes, I feel like I came half way across the world to hold this woman’s hand. She reads my thoughts and says, “Because you needed a mother. No one knows what life has in stored for us.” Today is the celebration of La Virgen de Guadalupe and I miss hearing the taclas of the dried calabashes in church halls. The entry in my diary is short:

I’m wrapping my words around a wound that hasn’t bled yet
Dripping the rags like prayers to reach you
Hoping to be like marmalade yellow on lemon:
there even when you can’t see me

Far from here, my two friends have/are visited/visiting the operating table. I rely on textbook knowledge to ease popping static emotions on telephone –It’s just a body. It can heal. We’re just Lego parts on operating table. I just want you to think about how happy you’ll be afterwards.

Sometimes, living far away feels like wrapping a tree
Each revolution an onhmed color
and the smell of burnt camphor that I lay on the Virgin’s feet
Exhaled in each breath
fractally sculpting this pacific blue that will
travel the world and darkness to be there,
hoping so very much to be there,
like the single tree wrapped in rags in this sunset room…
Breathing and glorifying God,
Saying, “Everything will be okay,” in the mantra of your name.

“If there’s trouble, sometimes all us freaks have is each other.” –Abe, Hellboy

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