Abuela

by Paola Carrasco

I hold your hand

soft with the wear of time:

Dried in childhood

by the sands of your homeland,

wet with the river,

silted by the porous,

volcanic stone of molcajetes.

Hands constantly

weighing new life:

Children and the

children of children.

You have held

the burning bodies of the febrile

and the boreal chest of the dying.

You have dried our trail of tears

across borders,

so that they wouldn’t find us;

Placed your hands in the clay

and made sieves in it,

hiding our pain and our nightmares,

covering it with the red earth

of the valley.