For Abuelo
I remembered your face the way you asked me to
In that portrait in sepia
Tea stained, like the leathery coat of your skin
Faded and scratched along the torn edges
Ghosts of pressed flowers trace the dark line of your slick hair
I can still smell you through the picture
Wafting traces of tobacco, whiskey and sweat
You always did have that charm about you
I have stopped asking my mother about your past
Every answer she gives me always looks heavy on her eyelids
Like she’d wish to shut her eyes and lock it into a nightmare
She fastens jewels of lies around her thoughts
Your name is infinite adjectives spewing from her lips
I have never asked my grandmother about you
I feel that you will never be the past to her
She sleeps against your demons with a rosary under her head
And stays in her corner as if you are on the other side of the bed
It is amazing the way I rebuilt you after I knew the truth
A grandfather is often a knee to sit on
A fishing trip
A coach for your ball games
But you stayed in that little burrow of a room
The one your children used to sleep in
Before they ran away
Let your sister take over the apartment
Let the hurt stain your walls into earth
Refused to kill your companions of roaches and mice
Who else would be there to watch the Yankees with you?
Where else could you hang your Fedora but on the old memories
That clawed through the door like rusty nails
On the bottle of whiskey taunting your empty pockets
A crap game outside
You lost your money again but you’re still feeling lucky
Your life has become scratched lottery tickets
And bills crying like orphans beneath your mattress
Cigarettes like fleas biting through your skin
Their smoke is the only breath that reminds you you’re alive
I remember when they took away your voice
Almost as if punishment for the abuse you brandished with your tongue
I would stare into the gaping hole while you slept
It looked like the mythical knots of a tree trunk
On your branded bark like skin
The noises you would make haunted me into tears
Speaking with no words
Notes scratching the thick sweat of the air
Your frustrations binding into wrinkles upon your lips
Crows feet bold like gourds for your tears
Accentuating syllables and I still couldn’t understand
When you would tell me you love me
I never knew what it meant
Because you always sounded like a monster
Like a barking dog trying to claw its way out of a cage
Like a persistant record stuck on the same line
Like a dream wrangling in the branches of a family tree
I claimed my inheritance the day you died
An open ear for the I love you’s I could never hear
The bananas and crackers you would give me as gifts
Maybe chocolates on the weeks you kept your addiction beneath the infamous whip of your belt
Your hands adorned with flies
Worn down bones and chipped edges of skin
A kiss hidden between the smoke rings
Family secrets, debts and empty cradles
A hissing and crackling game on the TV
And the smell of tobacco and whiskey
