Arrivals
When I throw up the candied coconut
mixed in salt water, I feel empty. Jujú
holds my hand, and I tell her next year
we’ll return to the ocean. Truth feels
different in the skin of a child. I think
that if I say it enough, the waves will
pull me back to the thunderous
music of the tide. Ocean waves
feel like body armor, like I can charge
into battle with them. Years later, this last
birthday off the coast would become memories
of tortillerías, sugared tamarindo on
the side of the highway near the beach,
and the musty smell of wet earth before
the rain comes. I remember every detail of the day.
How I stubbed my toe in the morning
and was bitten by a crab in the afternoon. People
on the beach that day have become living,
breathing photographs in my mind. Windblown
hair flying in people’s eyes, my name etched
on the dunes, cousins became mermaids
on the sand, my dad—full beard just barely
graying—smiles with a Dos Equis in his hand
and gestures wildly with the other, mid-joke.
by Anais Deal-Márquez
from: Poetry, March 2024
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I
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