After Aracelis Girmay

There was a portrait of you.
You, wrapped in deep-blue

Ocean fur. I wondered over
Your laugh, like a belch but

Regal and soft: all the birds
Responding. Oh, your blood,

Ours, all of us, not allowing you
Or I, the promise of health;

Of abundance like rivers and
Lakes. The gaze of your eyes

Appears to be saying— Tell me
About the pain, transfusions,

Your body rejecting the nectar
Of a ripe guayabas. I wanted

To meet you at the border-point
Between California and Mexicali;

Between this life and the one
That follows so stealthily.

Tell me When you listen to a
Body of water, do you hear song

Too? Oh, but you are here. Listen,
Hear, the mourning dove perched

Alongside the home you’ve lived.
Here, the home you’ve lived now

A multitude of this life and the
One that comes after and after,

A stretch of blue more continuous
Than the grandiosity of oceans.

Borders drowned under the gaze
Of a portrait of you, uninterrupted,

And, now,
gone.