My Mother Dreams​

 

My mother insisted that the modern began 

with the Mexican Revolution. The fragments erupting out of Popo or the darting 

beautiful crowds in Mexico City.  The Angel of the Independencia looking away 

from the light and into the light at the same time. There and not there. A history folded 

into an envelope tucked inside a locked desk drawer in an office where only

a janitor enters, looking for what needs emptying.

 

My madre talks about Mexico City like it’s a neon dream that has no beginning 

and the ending is revised with each new tragedy. Los Ninos Heroes in Chapultepec, 

La Alameda Central, Bellas Artes, she speaks of these places like they are friends 

that can’t age, and they are welcoming her con cups of café con leche or atole. 

 

My mother walked Mexico City when she was 16 and attended UNAM. Can you

reckon going from Douglas Arizona to Mexico City before you could vote, 

order a drink, smoke a cigarette, and not look like some punk too stupid 

for the day. Que fuersa. Que dolor. She imagined her reality beyond the smelter,

beyond the Sulfur Springs Valley, beyond the typing shorthand filing classes 

at Douglas High. An imagination full of radical refusals, three

day long train rides, projecting a future that allowed her a spirit.

 

My madre when I was finishing High school asked once, just once,

if I considered attending UNAM. I was surprised into a silence that must

have amazed my mother into pouring another cup of coffee to go with

her empanada. Her journey could not have been repeated. Her compass

was custom crafted. Her endurance a wind and tides found in the dreams 

of old sailors who tell stories of heroes.