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Poem

Endless Indian summers were spent in his embrace,
the only time as a child that I remember feeling safe
though the danger lurked mere bottles away.
I have only seen the sea with a child's eyes, but
I remember the waves that hit the tawny Corpus sand
and washed over us as we ran to shore.

This was where he took us
to escape from the heat of Dallas, 
to escape the demons in his mind,
and I haven't once returned. Perhaps it is 
fear holding me back, or knowing that I 
can never re-visit a memory. 

I often picture him, our footsteps etched 
into the earth, the way the light
hit the water and reflected off 
my tiny pink bathing suit,
the way his arms carried me to the surface,
arms that held me, strong.

Perhaps this was why Grandma saw something in me,
and she would beg me to beg him.
Maybe I could be the toughest of them all, 
me, tiny as a thought. 
She wanted me to swallow his addiction whole, 
be his saving grace,
be more important than the bourbon.

Leave the bourbon on the shelf, 
I was supposed to say,
pick us over your war-time ghosts. 
I'd only ask it now if I thought that he would stop
and listen to an eight-year-old's desperate pleas.

And he left a part of me in the ocean,
in sand dollars and singing sea shells,
in the mermaids' eyes that he claimed
to have resembled my mother's.
He left me with my own ghosts that I often dance with
to the sound of Tejano and a mariachi's haunting croon.

I fight to remember the 
goodness of my grandfather because 
he is still my endless Navajo summer;
He flows through me,
unstoppable, and unreachable, 
in the memory of tears.

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