it has been 9 months of waiting
for the drizzle and rain to feed the fallen timber
or resemble the touch of loved ones
you mention to the sky that you miss the days that you didn’t feel captive
the kind of freedom from breathing the same air as your kin
how do you make sense of days lost to the pandemic?
of losing yourself to 500 years of felt knowledge?
9 months ago while you walked the streets in south Oregon
you remember the day you spent at the cafe
watching the coffee drinkers and the just woke uppers
take up their space without worry of proximity to a stranger or a friend or a lover
Do you remember that coffee on your lips that you wiped off with your open hand?
the flavor is not the memory
what stays with you is the warmth from brushing against the strangers as you made your way to the counter
the several times you had to stop to let pass the worker and the poet and mother
inches from each other
that stays
the one time you got to almost touch your loved ones
the ones you used to spend days with laughing
was to mourn
one loss felt like more loss than was possible
You wanted to hold the ground in lieu of your loved ones
so you caress the leaves of the tree and tell them to prepare to fall in a few months
so you can fall with them and allow the caress of gravity
the cats know your grief routine
they prop their head into your curve
You talk to them in full sentences
Practice the conversations you wish you could gain the courage to have
The i'm missing you but I'm unable to give anything
The i'm sorry for missing your everyday while i try to stay in quarantine
You observe ghosts sweep through the streets
Occupying and making home of the empty
They up the winter with their arms and spell names on our bodies while we dream
FABIAN ROMERO P.h.C. (Purepécha) is a student in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. fabian’s academic interests include racial capitalism, settler colonialism, Black Feminist Studies, Indigenous feminism, gender and sexuality. Poetry, and artistic collaboration are integral to their research. Their work takes up the topics of gender, sexuality and authenticity for queer, LGBTQ Indigenous and two-spirit people as well as Indigneous kinship, art collaboration and imagining Indigenous futures.
Their written work can be found in Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics,Untangling the Knot: Queer Voices on Marriage, Relationships & Identity,Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices and their self-published chapbook Mountains of Another Kind.