*
“Hello sister.” I come home after work and I write emails to poets. “I’m sorry.” I’ve lost count of how many. “It is a pleasure to meet you.” It is not easy to find them, and they don’t always write back. “And a pleasure to hear about this project.” Defunct publishers, broken links, and friends of friends relaying relayed messages. “I was very happy to hear that something like this was happening.” Hello, my message reads, you do not know me, but….
Bloodshot eyes and a blackout sky, emails and names like cotton-winged things flying through clouds of white ash. You don’t know me, but…. You don’t know me, but…until, “This whole thing, it’s so sad.” I read it in the dark to the sound of my own typing, La Virgen del Carmen hanging from my wrist. “I barely know what to say.” While, on my windowsill, white flowers bloom from a carnivorous bouquet of Venus flytraps. “I know it must be the same for you.” I finish reading the email and lean back in my chair. “I know what you are feeling.” White ash in my hair, crumpled cotton wings in my pockets, and it hurts to blink. “I feel it too.”
In the bathroom I stare into the mirror, and, leaning close to my reflection, I press a finger into my eye. “It’s so awful.” I drag my finger gently back and forth over my pupil, back and forth until the contact lens is dislodged, and then I draw the tips of my thumb and finger together, slowly peeling it off like dry milk skin. “How we are reduced to things said about us, just because they say it.” I feel the shrink-wrap tug on the surface of my eye and hear the suction-cup plop when they finally come off. “No one really saying anything about it either.” Crinkly cellophane contact lenses and the soft contour of a blurry silhouette in the mirror. “No one trying to help.” Like the blurry noise of a megaphone outside the US embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, instructing all of us to stay on the other side of the street. DO NOT CROSS TO THE EMBASSY SIDE UNTIL YOUR DESIGNATED TIME. DO NOT CROSS. I REPEAT. DO NOT. Soldiers, fences, and backpacks full of documents.
“I really wish I could be part of this project.” I splash water on my face, Relax, my mother always tells me, You’ve done this a dozen times before…you’ve always done everything right…both your sisters are residents…it’ll be easy…it’ll be fine. Soldiers and fences, and white megaphones blooming from atop a razor-edged fence. “I really wish…but I can’t.”
I close my eyes and feel heat emanating through my eyelids.
“I hope you can understand.”
You don’t know me, but…but….
“I hope you can see it from my side….”
I put my glasses on.
“With everything that’s been going on.”
The world comes back into focus.
“I just can’t risk it.”
And I see myself in the mirror.
“I have family in the US, I can’t risk not getting a visa.”
I see others like me waiting across the street, staring at a megaphone, at a fence, a wall, a river, a television screen, a podium.
“I’m sorry, I hope you can understand.”
I see myself typing on the screen, It’s ok, I understand.
_____________________________
* From a series of emails, from a series of people.
Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.
*
To help more directly, please visit:
Hispanic Federation: http://hispanicfederation.org
Hope for Haiti: https://hopeforhaiti.com
Salvadoran American Humanitarian Foundation: https://www.sahf.org