Chance Castro
you are crossing a border.
A girl with a scar
on her forehead from diving bricks.
This is what they yelled
when security spotted them by dirty skirts:
A language filled
with connotations that drive us to Texas.
This is where it happened:
Died by a roadside,
or made it all the way home,
or we don't talk about it much, but he's buried
by a nopal near Zapata because we
lost our humanity & desert is a form of wilderness.
Is not the language dragged under fences
while sneaking into the baseball stadium,
girls catching seventh inning stretches after school.
This is what they yelled on the wrong side of a fence:
Fast for your children, run
for each one that will die as we have.
For the sake of water. Did you
close your eyes to chase down a long fly ball?
Was it more like a race
with two of your eight sisters? On the
day that you crossed did you think of me?
If I stand in a field can you feel it? Girl with blood
as tether, body as landscape,
momentarily leaving earth between each spring
of your legs, & from a distance,
it's as if you are still in the air.