Clap When You Land(9)

“Fuerte como un luchador.

Pelo afro y esos dientes derechitos.”

According to Papi, Mami looked fina, like a porcelain chess piece to be captured.

According to Mami,

something about him called to her.

Maybe his laugh, scattering birds as it rang out.

The way the crowd parted as he walked toward her, the way she stood & watched, unfazed & half smiling, forcing him to puff up his chest, to smooth his hair, to introduce himself to the woman he said he’d one day wife.





You would think coffee & condensed milk would give you some kind of light brown.

But I came out Papi’s mirror, his bella negra.

Thick hair like his, thick lips like his, thick skin like his.

When some of my cousins from Mami’s side

dissed me la prieta fea, I never listened. Papi’s reminder in my ear: you are dark

& always been beautiful: like the night, like a star after it bursts, like obsidian & onyx & jet precious.

But I know I am beautiful like all & none of those things: far in the sky & deep in the earth I am beautiful like a dark-skinned girl that is right here.

I’ve always preferred playing black on the chessboard.

Always advancing,

conquering my offending other side.





But although I got Papi’s skin color & his facial features, my body is all Mami’s. Her curves are a road map for my own dips.

You cannot say I am not both their child.

The first time Dre touched me without our clothes on, she kept running her hand from waist to hip. & I wanted to write Mami a thank-you text, for giving my body a spot that was made to nest Dre’s hand.

Sometimes I look down at my fingers, & they are long & thin; it’s Mami’s imprint

covered in my father’s dark.

But my laugh is an interrupter, all Papi. The cock of my head: all him.

When it comes to personality,

I am neither one of them.

When they hold boisterous family parties, I’d rather be reading in my room.

Where Papi is always thinking of how to save another dollar, I’m dreaming up a Sephora wish list to request for my next birthday.

Mami stands in front of a stove for hours, & I would burn an untoasted sandwich.

I am theirs. You can see them on me.

But I am also all mine, mostly.





Three Days After


Because I don’t know

if Papi is an anchor

at the bottom of the ocean, I ignore everyone’s calls.

I press Decline on my phone as classmates hit me up.

I want to fold my ears

like empty candy wrappers, small & small & smaller until no words fit inside.

I’m afraid if I close my eyes I will have accepted

his will never open again.

It is a losing battle;

I fall asleep on the couch with the remote in my hand.

I am awakened by a moan that sounds like something monstrous has clawed its way into my mother’s body.

Her ear cradles the house phone but my eyes follow hers to the TV: There have been no survivors found from flight 1112.





Dre has been my best friend since her family rented the apartment next door.

She’s been my girlfriend

since some time during seventh grade.

We share a fire escape,

& the summer we turned twelve we found ourselves out there

at the same hours of the day.

Dre would be reading a fantasy novel or pruning a half-dead tomato plant, & I’d be playing chess on my phone, or looking at nail tutorials.

She & I became tight

as freshly laundered jeans.

Both of us absorbed in our own worlds but comfortable sharing space.

Dre comes from a Southern military family.

She wasn’t meant to be a hippie child, but she’s granola to the core. A tree-hugging, squirrel-feeding, astrology-following vegan.

Me? I was a fashion-loving, chess-playing negrita who quit at the top of my game.

We both know what it’s like to have our parents look at us like we are dressed in neon question marks.

We also know exactly what it’s like to look at the other & see all the answers of ourselves there.





I am a girl who will notice if your nostril hair grows long or if your nails are cut too close to the quick.

I’d as soon compliment you

on how well you groom your edges as I would on how smoothly you steer a debate.

Dre will turn any conversation into one about gardening.

If you tell a dirty joke,

Dre will talk about plants that pollinate themselves.

If you talk about hoing around, you’d see Dre blink as her mind goes down a long winding path of tilling dirt & sowing seeds.

Here we are, with our interests in chess & astrology & dirt & each other.





Dre has been texting me since this morning.

She must have seen the news.

She didn’t hear it from me because I turned off my phone.

The thought of speaking makes me want to

uncarve myself from this skin.

But you can only ignore your girlfriend for so long before she knocks on the window & sticks her head in.