The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Lucia, purveyor of ripe mangoes, overseer of rivers, 

begot Hilda, priestess, dreamer, whisperer, gem keeper,

who begot her only daughter.  Named for royalty, 

I’ve been a slave to invention, newness, unyielding boxes 

holding a body which I’ll never get back—

young woman I wish I could claim but never owned.

That is her beauty: infinite reckless spiritualist in love with a God

that’s been kind.  

The young woman was once a girl, friendless, but loved

by her mother and father like an animal who mouths their cub

by the scruffy neck.  The girl did not know how to dress.

The girl did not know how to comb her hair.  That is the price 

you pay for loving pages in a book—you live messily.

But the girl knew other things: Disney and radio songs

and a bird in a pink cage that hissed through his bars.  She loved

creating and storing alternate versions of stories in her brain.

Like that time during recess when the schoolboy walked up concrete steps

leading inside, leaned over and spit on her puffy coat.  It was such a cold

day. Couldn’t the white have been snow on her shoulder?  

And what of the way she walked? Hunched, hoping she would crumple,

her body disappearing into smallness, whiteness, plainness.  

She imagined all the ways she could save her body from being looked at,

eyed, devoured. She knew, too young, how a body could get a woman

in trouble.  It’s my fault for constructing myself this way was the pervasive

thought echoing in her little girl-brain.  

The girl, the young woman, forgives herself and is hopeful, 

like Disney, like radio songs, but not like the hissing bird. The woman 

now, is forgetful. Remembers how to create, but forgets how to love

her body. Men used her to feel alive and she allowed it because

her mother’s advice, about love, was garbled, 

words on the tip of her tongue she can’t quite recall. 

She decides, this is the end

and surrounds herself with women.

Women who love her, guide her, pick her up and instruct her to be patient 

until she can hear the music again, the words again, trust

her body again. Hear her mother.  She does.  It’s glorious, 

and everything you’d imagine: angels’ iridescent wings flapping,

the earth rotating more quickly, and even—yes—soft kittens purring

on a pillow.  It is raucous.  It is peace.   

Origins should never be taken lightly, they feed the ego or starve it,

creating a woman boundless or shackled. Sometimes, somewhere

in the middle.  I was born to warrior women, but had to learn it all again,

the same lesson over and over like Caribbean water rushing in on sand,

drawing back to reveal creatures hiding in their shells.  

When I evoke my start, I taste salt, it calms me.  I taste power too, 

rough boulders washed over by ocean, instructing me to be formidable,

believe in their rocky boldness. 

This origin is for you—the believer, the rebel, the odd woman out. 

Maybe yours is a little like mine—

daughter of a goddess, birthed with a bit of fire flickering from the eyes.