Día de los Muertos
       

Overnight, the jack-o-lanterns have deflated: wrinkles, fallen gums.

Geranium: folly

At the pasteleria, the man studies the last name on my credit card.
My neighbors, they are from your country, he says.
But I have none.
He wraps the Pan de Muertos in a wax bag.

Every leaf that skitters across my path is a withered hand: brittle, curious.

Marigold: cruelty, jealousy

A line falls out from the slim red book of poems I carry.
Your hands were blooded bloom ...

Love, I've built a skyscraper of empty rooms.

At the Cathedral, red and blue votives flicker at the washed feet of saints.
¡O Señora, toma a esto mi corazón de plata!
Low candles pop and sputter.
Threads of smoke ascend, the strings of invisible balloons.

Dandelion: faithfulness

Love, you are the dark cut into memory.
Small, distant, as the sparrow's eye.

Tweet

Copyright © 2014 Brenda Sieczkowski All rights reserved
from Like Oysters Observing the Sun
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission