Eleutheria
- afrodescendenciaup
- Sep 4
- 1 min read
Updated: Sep 9
The plague torches me.
It has taken my lips, my lungs, my ganglia.
I will not be born. I am not going to live
to speak your precious name.
But when the night falls, Mother
pulls an ace out of her sleeve.
‘The talisman, where did I put it?’
There is nothing extraordinary in her sight
except for an explosion of whimsical fire-flowers.
In blue, purple, and green.
This vision is not from our human era;
it is mighty archaic.
Its relief is timeless.
It resembles the blind eye of the mystic.
The fever soon ceases . . .
In Guardarraya—Patillas, Puerto Rico—
on March 22, 1957,
as we commemorate the abolition of slavery,
at 1:00 a.m., I am born
with an odd third eye.