and...that's okay

...and i wish i were in new york. and window shopping with
mid-western mittens on south american skin. and my cheeks
have never been rudy with frostbite at age 5...but hers are.
and so outside the sephora mega makeup franchise i see reflected
my bundled up self living the white life and that's okay i think
that's a-okay so i begin to disrobe my hands...you know,
remember what ice feels like. remember that we have drops of the
same flag in our blood and although my mother never swung steady
a machete...she has sewn my clothes. she has prayed at my bedside.
she had paid for my oil changes. she has taught me of travel...
of a vast backyard.
of the responsibility that a passport stamps.
and that home is everywhere you choose to blossom.
she has given me a life never lived by her,
for me,
if i am so bold as to truly live it full.
...and christmas in new york with tv news stations and
draft beer specials are oddly cozy attributes to the city's jingle bustle.
the cathedrals emanate a more solitary tone of commercialized religion
and only few who enter now know how to operate the holy water.
let us pray. because, that's okay.
*november 2006


namaste, mom. i love you. te quiero mucho.