Almost, almost forgotten (Casi, casi en el olvido)

Tonight’s poem is about my auntie Rosa América.  I don’t know much about her.  Just that she died in a car (or motorcycle?) accident when my mum, her baby sister, was a teenager.  I always thought Dad had a thing for her before he fell in love with my mother.  Who knows.  From my Dad’s book Under the shadow (Sombrabajo). 

Almost, almost forgotten (Casi, casi en el olvido)

Almost, almost oblivion starts to bore her through.

My memory places her on the sixth floor

of that building where I saw her peek her head out the window

for the last time

greeting me, waving her hand up high.

And I reconstruct her in her small town,

in a house with big windows and a solitary courtyard

where flowers lived like sisters.

In the sound of her conversation

there was no plenitude: her pleasing words were sobs,

the intention of making others happy.

She wanted to be herself, candid, fulfilled,

because nobody suffered loneliness like she did

when death destroyed what her world was

including a father full of dignity and anger

and a mother with her rosary and her daughters on her back.

She remembered her loved ones one by one

and there was no resentment in her words, just joy.

She revised the days and the portraits

and perhaps she foresaw the twilight

in the calm of her heart, docile and simple.

She did not know about her trip back home.  We returned her

to her folks’ backyard in our arms.

Out of vanity we had her face reconstructed

and we kept it in a box of hard wood

that travelled fifteen hours to lie with us.

Then she settled permanently in her town,

with her own, resting with those

who preceded her.

Every now and then

we bring flowers and prayers

but also faith

of the same faith that she embraced

as refuge for her distance,

for her happiness surrounded by silence,

for the happiness that she never found completely.