In a dream my dead Tío tells me he’s happy

We’re driving along looking for an all-night bar

and I remember no one else but him, and how we laughed,

how he stuck his head out the window

and howled. And in the dream neither one of us

talked about our love/hate relationship with tequila

or how we both had a tendency to sprout fangs

at a single mirada. Didn’t matter if the eyes were

fans or jealous. When we found the bar

we walked inside and I said, Wait,

I have people I want you to meet! I said

They gotta see you now, like this. And my Tío said he

just wanted it to be him and I for a while, like this,

where I could see his face only lit by neon,

where his eyes weren’t crazed, weren’t blocked

by metal bars or a glass wall, where his voice

wasn’t crackled by static and a phone line, but smooth

marbles with mountains and forests inside, and all

that damn glimmering brown. So we smoked some mota

and chilled. We talked shit about the DJ and said,

This music’s too mellow.

Neither one of us wanted to make any requests or ripple

any change. But after some time

the red warm of the room was making me think

about things like love and holding hands and I told my Tío

I had a man he needed to meet. But all he said was Mija, you go.

I gotta stay here a while longer. But te amo, he said as I left,

leaving him behind on a red velvet couch, chillin with a joint,

and clouds pillowing his head.