 This poem is for my mother. Listo. Mother, who cleaned the coffee machine with vinegar and didn't bother to give it a rinse before brewing a 12 cup pot, which out of want or forgetfulness, you just keep warming. Mother, who always began our phone conversations, oh, how you? You OK? Oh, formality you didn't really understand, never leaving room for me to answer, having too much to say about esa hija de puta, or the neighbor, teneno otro bebé, or las barbaridades de la propiedad. Mother, who so often disappeared across the street to have your coffee on the porch with Nancy, stealing breaths of cigarettes you knew you'd never get back. Mother, who sat on a rock in the front yard, sucking mango seeds, having eaten every ripe bit of flesh, we watched you, our eyes asking for what we'd never get. When you had your satisfaction, you tossed the seed to us like the waiting dogs we were, and we'd gnaw on that soft stone. We'd scrape your desire satisfied into our own mouths. It always got caught in our baby teeth, but we learned how to pick it out by watching you use toothpicks. Mother, who shouted for us, try me la sal, though it was two steps in the cupboard right beside you. Maybe you wanted salt. Maybe you wanted a daughter to watch you cutting fat from thighs and bones, adding cumin and soy sauce and adobe seasoning. Maybe you wanted her to see how you never used a measuring cup or a spoon. Maybe you just wanted a body in the room while you sang Spanish pop songs off key and the radio played too loud. Digame otro canción de amor. Digame otro canción de dolor. Mother, who forced us to sit in the front row at church kneeling, standing, praying for 45 minutes of faked faith to pass quickly. In these pews turning to each other for peace be with yous and handshakes, I remember reaching for you, wondering how you came to have such soft hands. Mother, who for as long as I can remember went days without a bath without much reason, dark hair darkening under the weight of grease, making its own parts that didn't seem to move even when you touched them. I wondered why you didn't mind to seem the night smell you carried into the kitchen on your breath, calling out to us. Cafe, listo. Mother, who when baths became as painful as the constant ache underneath your fingernails, stopped taking them more than a person should. But you were not a person, so much as a series of strange side effects that kept you constantly pressing your nails into the skin that hurt underneath them, as if to hold them together, as if pressing hurt against hurt could make it disappear. Mother, who refused to stop cooking though the heat of the stove made you wince. You sat in a chair to stir the stew, a solitary front-row pew to honor what you could hold on to, cumin, soy sauce, lentejas, no measuring spoons, things that reminded you how it felt to be you. Mother, who grew hysteria and roses, lilies of the valley and bleeding hearts. Mother, who planted marigolds at Bapi's grave, always returning to collect the seeds in the same white envelope year after year after year. Mother, who's now buried beside him, no year engraved to mark your end because none of your children knew how or where to get that number set in stone, how to mark the day and year we became children without parents forever and ever, amen. Mother, who knew how to love children when they didn't know they were children, when they played viejito with a scrunched up face pressing against your laughter, your tenderness which never seemed to live past three years old. Mother, who over-salted dinner because you could no longer taste and so it was all too late discovered, this is why your tongue had ulcered, why tiny cuts felt like giant rips, why nothing tasted good, why nothing stayed inside for long. Mother, who bore the pain not on your fragile skin or inside your nearly arthritic bones, but in the shame that would have clung to your hair if baldness was not another side effect you wore, the kind of shame that waged so heavy on your tongue, it turned all your wants, dame, digame, oye, listo, to silence. Mother, who began to say I love you before hanging up the phone, not as a feeling I understood so much as the truth of a life lived in the absence of actions that matched the words. Mother, who invited me to Ecuador para ver su vida, who laughed and laughed con mis primos y su madre, con sus hermanas, and memories coming alive as I watched you laugh as I've never seen you laugh as if joy was the only thing that lived inside your skin. Mother, who understood abuelita's faces as she cried holding my hands, sobbing and sobbing because she thought she'd never see me again, her dementia mistaking me for you because I was in her house that was your house and I have your name forever and ever, amen. Thank you.