By Button Poetry
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Carlos Andrés Gómez, performing at Main Street Players in Miami Lakes, FL.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
Praise.
00:07
Praise.
00:11
Praise.
00:15
Because my grandmother’s final days lasted 23…
00:22
years.
00:24
And so we’d rush each time,
00:27
say goodbye and goodbye,
00:30
te quiero mucho, abuelita, te adoro.
00:35
Because my mother’s truest mother is grief,
00:38
who taught her the slack-jawed abandon of joy.
00:43
Because my daughter’s [trying to gather] a four-syllable word this afternoon.
00:48
Actually.
00:50
The word was “actually.”
00:53
Because I say “I love you” so much
00:57
to my wife, mid-fight,
01:00
and we chuckle sometimes between barbs
01:03
like we forgot which characters we were supposed to play.
01:06
Because I was given a best friend for all of six years,
01:10
and we hand-wrote letters each week, in bright ink,
01:14
dreamed of whose hair would give way first.
01:16
Because the dusk gave me a reprieve from the storm
01:20
on the way home from daycare today.
01:22
Because the rain is a stubborn guard when I’m most tired,
01:26
and Grace refuses the chariot,
01:28
also known as that rickety stroller
01:30
that has somehow not yet quit.
01:32
Because Brent’s metamorphose is those ticking minutes
01:34
everyone else loses sleep over,
01:36
shows up an hour early,
01:38
or makes me wait while I re-read the menu
01:40
I’ve had memorized for a decade.
01:43
Because we pretend we don’t know what we’ll order,
01:45
ask each other,
01:47
then get the chicken pad thai every damn time.
01:50
Because my little sister and brother were once small enough
01:52
to make a home of my curled arm.
01:56
Because I loathed their arrival,
01:59
until that moment, on the seventh floor of Mt. Sinai.
02:03
Because there are no half siblings.
02:06
Because my body begins to fail a little more each morning
02:09
in minute and quiet increments,
02:11
like gradual, gorgeous rust.
02:15
Because only survival gifts us those letdowns
02:18
that remind a persistent marvel it is still here.
02:23
Because I courted death too long
02:25
but now dream of my retirement porch.
02:28
Because my son’s scalp at 76 seconds old,
02:32
the three weeks he barely slept for more than 15 minutes,
02:36
the lunges that shaped my quads
02:37
and calmed his sobbing just long enough.
02:39
Because I have wanted to be a father
02:42
as long as I have feared its weight.
02:45
Because I exhale knowing I cannot fail what I cannot leave.
02:49
Because no one I know
02:52
has grown more in three decades
02:57
than my father.
03:02
Because right now
03:05
the oven is performing its miracles,
03:08
spring is teasing us with its slow building warmth,
03:12
my daughter is coloring in vibrant looping scrawls
03:15
that look like cartoon fireworks
03:17
or the curls wreathing the large eyes she’s borrowed from her mother.
03:21
And, finally,
03:24
finally,
03:28
I’m home.
03:32
(cheers and applause)
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video