The Immigrant Visits Her Mother
Those tropical mornings I woke to no sun
in a shuttered room, the shuffle of slippers
at my door, hall light flooding the gap
her slight frame could not fill, smaller
than when I last saw her. Through the net
of sleep floated her voice, repeating
my name. I rose, stumbled to my feet,
offered my arm. Her good leg leading,
we made our way to the dim-lit table
where I sliced a bagel neatly in half,
fed it to the glowing toaster. When the rounds
popped out—fragrant, golden—
I spread the cream thin with a knife,
layered the silvers of smoked salmon
from the packet I'd carried from Chicago,
a twist of lemon to finish. One bite
and her eyes glazed over, forehead
uncreased. For a moment she was
twenty-six, a medical student again,
lipsticked and bone-tired from her shift
sitting at a Brooklyn diner to coffee,
a bagel, and the Times. Here, decades
and hemispheres away, dawn burns
through Manila smog, licks the blinds
of the kitchen where my mother fills
her mouth with the salt and sting
of her first New York winter
the year before I was born.
Copyright Credit: Angela Narciso Torres, "The Immigrant Visits Her Mother" from What Happens Is Neither. Copyright © 2021 by Angela Narciso Torres. Reprinted by permission of Four Way Books, www.fourwaybooks.com.
Source: What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books, 2021)