Once I was in love & I think I loved that girl
much more than she loved me. Would I heal?
Would I
appear once in her dreams robed in yellow light
as
an omen of truth? In the frailty of love I re
sented her.
Had she equaled the intensity of my longing I
could have
imagined our bodies as one single lovely beast
roaming . . . & if this beast died the next day its
death
would not matter. I remember that when I was
12
I heard about an uncle who twenty years before
had gone away for good. But he hadn’t died
like his younger brother, whose life was taken
slowly
by TB. My uncle who disappeared simply stopped
writing home, stopped sending money & post
cards
from exotic places: Los Angeles, Pittsburgh,
Des Moines . . . They wondered where you went,
uncle Felix.
The story about you entered my life, a distant
airplane that got closer until it really meant noth
ing
between two people talking; they just talk louder
& as the airplane disappears in the sky their voices
subside. No one looks up.
You, Felix, the extrovert, the handsome one, the
dancer,
the one who talked to children, dazzled the girls
& had
the quiet respect of men, could have saved them.
This
I could tell in their envy & admiration & their
quiet resentment that grew like fingernails.
You could have linked them to the world & to
each other
& for that their lives could have been different.
Instead,
they sought spirits & became thieves, liars, con
verts to
anything, whorehouse keepers, solid citizens.
Had you died for real, they could have gone on,
& someone
would have said in hushed tones at family gatherings,
“Felix . . . Poor soul. He died so young . . .”
They could have
taken turns at it. Instead, you entered their lives
for a short time, a companion at the movies who
leaves
his seat & never returns, while they all sit there,
waiting,
until the theater closes & they are ushered out.
Two years after your letters stopped someone
saw
you in Missouri, tending desk at a motel
on the outskirts of a town with an unpronounce
able name.
I pictured you behind the counter, not really
noticed by the young man who fills out the reg
ister,
the bulge on his pants breathing with a life of its
own.
When the young man & his girl walk up to their
room their laughter stays in the air for a few
seconds & then enters slowly
the worn rug. You turn around & continue read
ing a book,
your back bent like the tall grass across the high
way, or
like your life. Later, someone said you were do
ing time
in El Paso for smuggling workers. You appeared
then
defiant in a quiet way, a little fortune stashed
away
for your release, keeping to yourself.
Years later, someone swore you were in Chicago,
portly
& happy, the owner of a jewelry store. I said to
myself,
Why Not? You would wear thick glasses & a
three-piece suit,
speak in low tones & seldom smile, for it would
be
a quiet business, the thick carpet drowning out
your steps.
Another time it was you in the hospital in San
Jose,
a broken back, another casualty of the apricot
season.
I imagined you craving morphine, while the young
nurses
gathered in the next room for coffee & talked
of boyfriends going off to war, of disease enter
ing
their children, of boredom eating up their youth.
These stories went on for years, even after your
parents died
& your brothers & sisters were scattered around like bruised fruit.
Uncle, after 20 years of stories I know so little.
I want
to imagine you content, honoring your name. I
want you
falling in love once with a girl whose love
matched the intensity of yours. I see you bois
terous &
the two of you drunk with love for a few years.
Until one day she runs off with a lover & leaves
you
with two daughters whom you raise. Years pass
& you are left a little less happy & unsure
of everything & ashamed at being shortchanged.
Or maybe
you felt belittled & didn’t care & changed your
name
& invented a past to tell your daughters,
just as I am inventing your life now because I no
longer
want to hear stories or obituaries about you.
I don’t want you to be a ghost
disturbing lives that had nothing to do with yours,
even if at one time they called you brother, son.
(Ernesto Trejo)
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