I wake to find light creeping under my eyelids,

Slowly peeling the stark black from my eyes

until they are at one with the whiteness of the morning.

I am slowly learning that the day comes with no warnings.

 

Words in my head as I touch the red of her fire to my lips

And hang the diadems of her and our people to my ears.

A silver epitaph to the gold we once possessed,

the remnants of which lie within our blood and permeate our fears.

 

I wish that they see the gold flush under the Olive skin

The memory of greatness almost spilling over the brim

of this living vessel I have occupied.

I wish that I could almost have died.

My body decomposing into cempasúchil and monarch butterflies,

To show that even when dead I am alive.