Suzanna C. de Baca

​The Lanyard
 
Before you died / you made a video / telling everyone you loved them / talking to us and to your son / making jokes about how you’d never grow old / how the silver lining was that your boobs would never sag / We’d all flown to El Paso and driven to Las Cruces / We sat out in the sweltering heat at your service / shifting our bodies on rickety folding chairs / in the middle of the football field at the stadium at the University / because you were nothing if not up for a grand gesture / We all looked up and watched your pretaped recording on the jumbotron screen / Everyone laughed at the jokes you made about dying young  / even though we were crying / You were a firecracker until the end / and made us all say / oh, if I have to go / let me face it like her / There’s a lanyard clipped to a piece of laminated plastic / hanging in my closet by the necklaces / It’s burgundy and white / with a picture of an Aggie / your name and date of birth and date of death / When I look at it every single day / the thought that goes through my mind / is I hope I live long enough that my boobs sag / I think of your mother / and how I should call her. /

**
 
La Sociedad Folklorica
 
Long after you died / I stumbled upon your cookbook / at White Sands National Park / There it was sitting in a display  / I was shocked to see my own name on the cover.
 
 I opened up the slim / beige volume / a rough paper surface / with a red ristra design / on the front / and there on the pages / were the dishes that I held in the deepest recesses of my memory. 
 
The smells overwhelmed me / and I got dizzy / standing there in the visitors center / surrounded by tourist books and maps and trinkets / wondering what you were really like / what had unfolded when you made each of these dishes / what happened when you married a man your parents disapproved of / I nearly fainted reading the ingredients for pozole / and chile sauce / and lines that said “First, slaughter a goat.”  
 
When I left the store / with a paper bag full of your books / I looked up at the white dunes stretching out beyond the horizon / and wished I could ask you all these questions / and sit with you in your kitchen. 
 
**

I Did Not Know Your Mother Well
 
I did not know your mother well     We only met a few times      She was quiet, like you    a tall blond Norwegian woman    with a sturdy frame    large hands and feet    and warm cornflower blue eyes  her back  slightly bent from years of labour     as a cleaning lady at the univerisy
 
I really only know her from the fierce love      of her children    the reverence with which you all speak of her   the matriarch     the artist    from the hand painted ceramic figures     with painstaking brush strokes and detail   From the sketches of deer     stretching their necks with their antlers upright    From the dream catchers she left behind     woven with beads and sinew and tufts of a bird’s wing     Everything signed with a simple line drawing of a feather  
 
Once I asked you what she used to make you for dinner    and you said affectionately    Oh, she was a terrible cook    She burned everything and she hated school     She liked to stare out the window at the birds and trees  
 
She died suddenly of sepsis    Now, when I see dream catchers and feathers     I think of Alice   I feel her comfort     and I look out the big glass windows at the cardinals and the pines  
 
**
 
The Baptism 
 
It happened in a Best Buy parking lot    where I’d driven my old car and was running inside     head down and stress pounding in my temples    to get a laptop fixed after the operating system upgrade    had failed and the screen had gone pitch black   The snow hit suddenly   as soon as I pulled into an empty space    and by the time I’d walked to the clear glass double sliding doors     flakes so fat and fluffy hit me    right in the eye    liquid streamed down my face   The blizzard enveloped me      the sun glistening and reflecting     The world went white   and I was blinded by brightness     Time momentarily stopped    earlier panic forgotten    and I saw    the sign as plain as day    so I turned and ran    nowhere in particular    through the cars   around and around in circles with my head tilted upward    to the sky   cheeks wet    Here I am   I said to the sky    I see you right here    How could I have ever doubted you?
 
**

Biscochitos
 
You made cookies called biscochitos, small round shortbread circles made with lard and anise, rolled in cinnamon and sugar / and pressed down with fork tines. /  The aroma of baking filled your small yellow kitchen. / 
 
When you came to live with us, / I wasn’t sure of you. / You didn’t talk much / and you sat quietly with a rosary most of the time, / eyes closed, / fingers moving. / 
 
Before you lived with us / you’d moved from the ranch to Albuquerque / to live with your sister  after Grandpa died. / Mom told us you washed vestments and clothes for the priests in the parish.  / What kind of job is that I used to wonder / as a nine year old. / 
 
I used to shudder at the wooden rosary beads / in your fingers and the crosses on the walls / but now that I am older, / I find myself turning a smooth black buckeye in my hands / over and over, / eyes closed, / praying for something. /
 
**
​
Signs of Healing
 
I did not know I was frozen. Trudging forward in the snow, one step at a time, barely lifting my feet. But I can now see how shallow my breath was, how narrow my gaze. I moved automatically, blocking anger, ignoring ache, and found shelter in the cold hard ground.
 
I did not know I was in a box. I thought I was smiling, but I was biting my lip, clenching my fingers into fists, curled into a shell. As I woke, I thawed slightly. And then the pain began: the sharp bite of regret, the knife wound of sadness, the fear of too much blue sky, too much sun.

I did know I was in a crypt. But spring shone warmth on me and the light peeked in. And then I panicked. Was I moving backward? How could daylight be colder than death? I clung to the darkness but there was no turning back. Dormant in winter, I had become myself.

**

Suzanna C. de Baca (she/hers) is a native Iowan, proud Latina, author and artist who is passionate about exploring change and transformation. She is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative and her poetry has been published widely in literary magazines and journals. She is the recipient of the Derick Burleson Poetry Award and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in the small rural town of Huxley, Iowa, population 4244.