And on that topic of ghosts, just very
accidentally, this poem is titled "Ghost."
But it's not a poem.
It's actually-- I'm working on a series of nonfiction pieces.
They are 300 words or less.
And I call them "bielitas," little stones, little rocks.
Those of you that grew up cleaning beans for your mother
know exactly what I mean.
You pick out the bielitas and you throw those away.
And I thought, so many of these pieces
were tiny throwaways from the memoir
Butterfly Boy, so I thought I'm going to bring them back,
resurrect them as bielitas.
So, these are non-fiction.
"Ghosts."
"My brother Alex tells me he saw a ghost in the hallway
last night, a boy wearing a baseball cap
mouthing to himself as he leaned into the bookshelf,
as if trying to make out the words
on the spines in the dark.
It is 5:00 AM, the time of night when
Alex rises to piss, to lumber along
the cold floor from his bedroom to the bathroom
at the end of the hall.
It's the only time he regrets not having slippers.
It's the only time he remembers all about the icy concrete
beneath his feet.
When he stumbles upon the boy, my brother
is shaken out of his drowsiness and it's
his hands that feel clammy now.
But the boy doesn't realize he has
been caught in the mischief, escaping his ghost
world to take a dip in the realm of the living.
So, my brother gives him the universal-- psst!
It's understood in both English and Spanish,
and in the language of the dead, apparently.
Startled, the boy snaps his neck to look at my brother
and then scurries into the darkness, vanishing
through the wall at the end of the hall.
He tells me this on the cell phone
as his truck crawls across the border
on his daily international commute from Mexico to the US.
I'm listening to the honking of my homeland
as I look out my window in my eighth floor New York City
apartment.
I tell him I believe.
I am certain that a previous tenant died in my place,
that the spirit roams the room in search
of the comfort of its bed.
We are both displaced, my ghost and I,
and therefore have been adequately matched
across the dimensions, just like Alex and his ghost,
because they are both border crossers."