Jaime:
I have seen your son, 12 and black and beaming and
know he will one day pick up a gun, become a gun,
a box too heavy to carry and there's nothing
I can do about that. He still thinks his daddy's a hero.
You're a blood-soaked, dead-eyed deer
that I once let feast upon all the good I could give you.
You are the boy who I once watched cradle
a sparrow, stiff and unmoving between your two black palms,
pressing beak to lip because this was still when you thought
all it took to bring a dead man back to life was a touch. A kiss.
The year everyone went hungry in your house,
'cause things ain't been the same 'round your part of town
since big Mike went and got himself shot (son of a bitch) and say
what you will about cubans but abuelita could turn bellies full of empty air
to arroz con pollo, thick and fragrant frijoles negro, ajiaco
for winters drawn long and hard with dad combing the streets. Everything
a skin and bone kid like you could let fester to the core,
to unparticular tuesdays cutting class letting your hands turn my hair
to a wildfire, lighting up, high on your breath and whatever else you hid in it.

Jaime, I have planted trees for you.
In the yard. In my head. It's funny having a garden you can't burn.
It's funny watching you fall into a grave every night and you always ask me
to tuck you in, a blanket white men make you out of spite.
A sickening and withered grove of trees. I have made a forest, dedicated
this to your specific kind of destruction, a hard and bitter fruit. Everything
you've touched has chewed you up and spat you out, so you crawled to me one day.
I remember that, hands and fucking knees. I tried so hard to keep you down
it made me sick to my stomach. The man who saw you black doesn't care how long
your momma spent praying, he doesn't care about all the three pointers
you shot: congratulations, finally you made yourself a story your dad could be proud of.
Congratulations, finally you're a face on a white boy's t-shirt.
Another martyr, another riot, another dead deer for the feds
to set their sights on.

One night at a block party I kissed so-and-so from algebra class
because I liked the way she pushed up her glasses and her legs went on forever,
hair in coils like jungle vines and all I wanted was to climb
somewhere higher. See above all these fuckin leaves. You wanted to become the man
who left you so you made yourself a bundle of bullets and hate,
a number on a list of hate crimes and your girl wants you to know she hates you,
for making your son another sad black boy
with an empty stomach, stretched thin by generations of heart-ache. I say oye papito,
your mom's been telling me 'bout that shot you made wicked game huh, and
what do you want for your birthday?
He doesn't ask for the books I always give him but a gun and a father and fuck you,
Jaime. Only strangers love martyrs.

You have a face to me. Fuck you for lighting us up every tuesday and then rinsing
your mouth three times with all the girls who let you touch them. I loved you
down to the bone for no other reason than you were there and so, so beautiful.
I needed something full of flesh to weigh me down, even if it wasn't myself.
I wanted to keep you fed all year round.
I don't care that you gave me bruises, I really don't. I can make my hurt a garden
if I try hard enough. I see you in my dreams, walking towards a hail
of falling sparrows.
And I'm always telling you stop.
Always saying please.
I see you in the puckered twist of skin on my finger where you once
held the end of a cigarette too long, and thank you, by the way.
Thank you for giving me a pain so great I had to bury it somehow,
somewhere in myself. In the mausoleum of the body,
I lock you in my finger. Make you a room of light, a room with no corners.
I make you something beautiful in my head
if nothing else, more than just a hungry child coming to feast
at my abuelita's table. She says

child, have you eaten?
are you listening?
querido, you are so thin
I have counted your ribs.
come inside,
we won't let you
go hungry.