Desert

 If I ever get lost in the red mountains of the desert, don’t come trying to find me. For most certainly, death has found me first and I don’t want her to find you in this hot dry passage, don’t come find death. I don’t want you to see my shrunken, sunburnt, dead body lying down in this brown crystal tomb. 

I know the desert is ungrateful. It’s a place that can curse you back if you but raise your tone at it in a fit of rage from thirst.

The heat of the desert is no place to be by yourself. It is best to stay in your home. It is best to forget the desert. Best to forget me.

Love and friendship

 May your loved ones never doubt how much you love them 

May they have a “yes” for you most of the time 

May your life be boring good, except when you’re going  on adventures and be present and together with the ones you are together.

Even if we’re far away, I want to call myself your friend.

I will be your sunshine whenever, you can talk to me, I will listen.

I wish you all the love you’re giving and I’ll give you as much friendship as you give me.

For love and friendship hold this life together

Grown-up

 Circe says I've become a "señora de las lomas"

But I say I am more like the adult my childhood self would have wanted me to be:

Coloring pages till late, eating donuts for breakfast, playing in the snow in winter and in the water in summer, listening to music, watching The Dukes of Hazzard.

Yeah, I am a really cool girl. Bring me back to the 1980s. Y ¡que viva el sur! 

Eucalyptus

 I want to listen to you. Your voice shall never be alone as long as I am living.

You are my practice, because you make me perfect:

Perfectly happy hiding in your arms any given evening. 

I am your eucalyptus: cling on to me like a koala. 

At least there is a slab of reality that brings us peace. How hard it was to find it. 

But all the fuckery from the past seems to be undone by the present. And here we are: present.

People would say it's a gift from God; I'd say it may be heaven sent, but not a gift. We definitely worked for this.

And in the meantime, this place and time is ours to live. Live it fully. Feel it lively. 

Tennessee will always be a deeply cherished time of my life. 

 There are so many things that I would like to say but I can't find the words.

So I take my markers and color instead. You were never much of a word person, anyway.

And I always thought I was more interesting than what I actually am.

You need to take me to places so that we can have things to say.

Experiences I'd live with you and no one else.

Have a warm smile and the cold gone away for a while. 

For a while we laugh away the dread and I remember who I am.

Don't deny the petty favors I ask, you know you are all I have.

Don't get bitter, angry or sad.

Because this it, this is us, this moment:

Let us live and not waste time. 

Christmas 2024

 May your holidays be merry

and your sauce be cranberry. 

May your Christmas lights be bright

and your

turkey as tender as your heart. 

Border girl

 I've always thought of myself as a Tex-Mex border girl, though I am really not.

I am an echo from voices of the past. 

Grandma's mom was from Villa Ahumada and grandma lived in El Paso. 

I am the niece of my Tía Lilia, who lived on and off between El Paso and Chihuahua. 

I am the neighbor of the Chaviras, who owned acres of Walnut and lots of honey bees. 

Its is none of their fault that I feel foreign in my own home.

I am a chimera made with pieces from here, there, and nowhere near myself where would you find me. 

I am lost by the border. A little bit south from it. 

And is my sun still shining on the dessert? My heart belongs in the town by the dunes.