Tennessee
This morning, from a plastic film canister, we took the two tabs of acid we bought in New Orleans, called our mothers after pressing them to our tongues, and wandered past ourselves into an imagined city, untranslatable as grief. I thought only our sadness would outlive us, not these bodies in the landscape, rearranging under the cruel August sun. When I say, We’ll have to be each other’s mothers, it’s too late to ask the mirror-light of the river to forgive us, as our sweat-soaked shirts begin to cool, and we guess our way back in the dark. Reader, if you believe one thing I tell you, let it be this. As Jesús sketched my portrait in the dim light of a rented basement room, I sat on the floor and wrote, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. And yes, I was high and in love and crying, but I really did feel my father’s spirit move through my body, that he wrote those words, not me.