The Part That’s Left for You

You won’t find what you’re seeking here,

a beginning in which salt emerges as the bridge

between the Sky and Sea. I’m sorry you can’t have

an origin that holds you. The serpent in the ocean

who chases seven moons into eclipse,

the one whom gods and demons grip

to churn, to churn—nectar, poison into being:

your blood can’t simply connect these stories

so the deity of loss becomes origin to salt.

(Somehow this will still begin with salt.) The earth will not

belong to how you hold the earth. The bird in the story

may never alight where your homies visioned, combining

three birds you are from. This illegitimate salvage

brings no augur to save you at the crossroads, no.

You’re wrong again. You’re faltering. The signs

are all around: sun, moon, stars, and land,

a failed attempt to overthrow—and more to give. This

is only partial, another displaced version. Like you, it’s incomplete.

iii

And, in every moment: whole. You’re from

mistakes, my dearest—the failure of Gods to love the world

They made. Not only, but still: a world begun in war,

which is to say, in mourning (before this story separated them

Sky and Sea would touch). Here is the land, who led the rise

and fell. Here, the stars, the moon and sun: their raised-up

light, what the Gods had to settle for. After the Sea

convinced the Sky to try: Their own brightest failure—

it’s up to you, my loves—to restore the dead to life.

Notes:

Prompted by a conversation with Keana Aguila Labra and Maria Bolaños, in relation to a collaboration with visual art by Julay.

Source: Poetry (January/February 2024)