FOR AURORA
By
Dolores de Leon

There was no record of her birth
She was a Gypsy

As a young girl
Face round a fleshy apple
Aurora sang
Voice high and baby sweet
An arrow to open the
sky

As a woman
Slim tree
She married the little seed--
They held hands
Made gentle jokes
Her height his nose

Every night she rocked beneath
him
Every night she wished for
a baby
None came

She knew the superstitions
of her clan
Garlic in belly buttons
Cures bed wetting
Thorn bushes on gravestones
Keeps the ghosts from
rising

She buried an egg
In the river's bank
Sat beside it day and
night
Begging for a baby
None came

In bed
She began to hear the extra beat
Of her husband's heart
It told her--
Other women

Undone
Her shadow let loose
treading black
The weight began:
Collapsed flesh
Jowls hanging from her jaw
Breasts sagging to her waist
Corpulence as a landscape
sea of belly
terrain of hips
She could not sleep lying down
She'd suffocate

A kindly woman
Watching over everyone
She held together
The bits and pieces of her
husband's life
Lying in the gutter like
spangles off a
dress

The first attack
Her lights
All but gone
I held the sweaty head
against
my shoulder
While her heart turned
over

~

The date of her dying is written
in a book
The illness the hospital the doctor
present
But her birth was never recorded
She was a Gypsy