What were the best five lives,
the best five big bangs
the best five galaxies
the best five universes
the best five suns
the best five worlds
the best five centuries
the best five decades,
the best five years,
the best five months,
the best five days,
the best five hours,
the best five minutes,
the best five seconds
of a moment
of your family?
If you hear creaking mattresses
in the night of your home
is it ghosts or the orgasms
of unrequited lovers?
How many mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandma’s, grandpa’s, aunts, uncles
have given their lives
so that you may have a shot at happiness?
What happens to you
when you see old photographs
of your ancestors,
do you fall in love with them
or do you wish they could tell you their stories?
Do you know
your grandmother’s favorite colors,
her birthdate,
the name of her first boyfriend,
if she loved someone other than your grandfather
and never left?
Will you be like her,
give birth to twelve children
with a man she may not love?
Will your love be that strong to survive anguish and wars?
My grandmother taught me
that my success was the offspring
of 1000 relatives and ancestors
who failed,
who struggled,
who suffered
and only knew happiness
as a legacy she, he, they gave to me.
I carry the anguish of thousands in my bones,
I get to smile, laugh, be nourished, be hopeful,
because they had no happiness,
only disease, deaths, harsh work
and tender lovemaking that birthed dead or dying children.
All my ancestors are light as an orgasm,
as deep as my belly laughs,
as clear as my tears.
When my grandmother tried to choke to death her husband
she was trying to kill the woman she never became.
She was a woman who loved women,
who loved me,
who loved plants and seeds,
who took care of all children
– because no child could be illegitimate –
who only believed in horizons
and where the waterfalls were her prayer beads.
She said:
You will become a revolutionary of love,
a revolutionary to destroy solitudes,
to resurrect all the old ones who didn’t make it
because they harvested someone else’s crops,
tilled their lands for other people,
who were killed by work and hate,
whose love was never honored,
whose lives mattered because they, she, created more life and lives.
My grandmother said she did not have children so that they would be slaves.
She had children so that they would have lives, not hers, their own.
And she would live in us, in me,
in whatever life we chose
and she would be free, lazy, drinking coffee,
have more free time to debate Protestants
and make her body the theology of the future.
My grandmother made love, made children, made a new god of her body…
[September 2013 | Oakland, Califaztlán, Ohlone Territory]
