MY MOTHER WITH THE HEAD OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

the problem is: I say “love” and imagine you know

what I mean. all I remember

of childhood: we are either in church

or alone. everything depends on memory. it is all we have

control over. back then my mother and i are always driving,

always moving somewhere. we used to pretend it was a game,

that we were searching for hidden treasure

or my father. now       leaving behind someone I love

comes second nature. the earth shifts uncomfortably

beneath us, unsure if it loves the way we dance on her shadows.

with the way her eyes were always pinned open,

I imagined my mother never needed to sleep. maybe it was last year

I realized she didn’t want to, not by herself. I was very young

when I began trying to fill the void my father left

within her. like this     (intercession),

there are traumas whose names I have only learned

years after.      what a hand has been dealt

to my mother’s flesh; how it cracked open

and let out a man

defeated.                      and what a radical act of resistance,

to continue to go on, to love, to smile, to let herself be broken

so many more times. more than anything, I want my death

to be beautiful, as beautiful as a woman

speeding toward an embrace. all the poetry in the world

is in the way my mother would hold us, shadows

of an absent man. I’ve only seen her weep

in my dreams, doubled over under a dead sun,

hands overflowing with forgotten dreams,

all alone and with nowhere to go. this

is how you condemn: tell a body

there is no home to return to.

Anderson Peguero II is a writer and artist primarily based out of New York City. is a writer and artist based in New York City. He has a number of passions ranging from visual art to architectural design to creative writing. His poetry has appeared in Figure One, Bad Pony Mag, Quarto Magazine, and more. He graduated from Columbia University in 2019 with a degree in psychology.