Two American sonnets en Borinkén 

Themes: Family // Love // Silence // Queerness // Borinkén 

in the valley where sunflowers burn

awake, i find wood burning
in a house not too far off. palm trees bow,
in prayer, but collapse. a sheet of tar
looms above the mountain’s base—
so thick, it presses like molasses mixing
with scrambled eggs. a smoke-slick chaos.

i breathe what the fire gives. the pastel paint
lifts from the jalousie window like brown sugar skin
scorched and split open. the valley burns—
lined with sunflowers my mother once said:
you don’t know how to be alone. stay.
my first breath held no sound. quiet boy. already
listening for what was burning in the house
& stayed with nothing left but borrowed breath.

smoke and missing father

when i was five, i saw smoke
for the first time. clouds shaped like an 

(  ( ( O ) )  )

i wished it was his arm brushing fire
across the kitchen table, a gesture shaped
in me by absence. i woke to silence, the house holding
its breath. the walls in waiting.
then the wooden floorboards cracked—

i watched mami tuck my brother’s limbs
like a doll. my body sensing,
queer in the quiet, too slow to respond.
so i entered my breath. not the world.
i dreamed with my eyes wide open. i didn’t scream.
i didn’t sleep. tell me, how does the earth cough up
this kind of grief when it misses a man?