Meditations on Cultura

In honor of Latino Heritage Month I'm sharing a series of poems I wrote back in 2019 thinking about my family, my heritage, and identity. I've been writing and rewriting these over the past 5-10 years now and I like to revisit them to see what has changed, what has stayed the same, and what phrases or lines are still echoing in my head all this time later: 

I 
Imagine this
Arms stretched
Legs too
Holding on
To homes I've never met
The strain
As these islands drift ever further
Pulling muscle from bone from soul

II
The first poem I ever wrote about home
Was about my grandma
I wrote: 
"CAFE! Grandma screamed so that we all knew it was ready" 
Something about the smell
Something about grown-ups laughing
While I sat and observed
I read it out loud
And the love drunk smiles of my titi's and tio's 
Told me it was magic
I don't want to leave this memory

III
Ay vece que me siento tan sola 
Sin historia
Sin cultura
Sin significado
Como hay un cuento que yo nunca sabré
Como hay tan grande una historia
qu me va a romper mi espalda

IV
I imagine you
Blue suitcase in hand
Standing at the bottom of the ramp
Looking up at nineteen floors of bring and glass and steel
Sometimes smiling
Sometimes teeth clenched against the wind you didn't predict
Sometimes crying silent tears
And I wonder if you knew 
What was coming? 

V
In the end 
All I have
Are lazos de sangre
And that's enough

VI
In the end
All I have
Are lazos de sangre
And that's too much

VII
It will take a lifetime 
To find the intersections
The carefully placed knots
The twists
The interlocking 
The weaving
The unraveling
Of hilo and veins and blood
That make up
Lazos de sangre

VIII
If we are measuring
I am
One quarter Dominican
Three quarters Puerto Rican 
If we are measuring
I am American
(though this is a technicality
an imposition)
If we are measuring
I am the third generation to be born
In the United States
If we are measuring I am 
Of Spain
And Portugal
And Taino
And Cameroon
And France
And Ghana
And Mali
And Italy
And Andean
And Benin
And Ireland
And Senegal
And Sweden
And Northern Africa
If we are measuring I am 
the daughter of Omar Almanzar and Maritza Santos
Of Atabey and la Virgencitya
Of Lugos' and Cruz's and Montilla's and Rivera's
And names lost to the bottom of the ocean
And names lost to the stars
And names only love can unravel
And I am one hundred percent
Salina Mayloni Almanzar

Meditations for Aurea
I
How much have lost
Crossing el charco? 
And how much still
Is lost
Waiting at the bottom
Of the ocean
For one of us to go back
And fetch it
I am curious what the implications are
I am curious if
I can 
Handle it
Has my body evolved so much so that my fingers
Can't recognize
The feeling of a familiar
Tongue
Stone
Home

II
What does it mean to read myself into you? 
What does it mean that I only know you through the words past|passed down to me
Through the cloth
of my mother
of my father
of my father's mother
of my father's father
I remember most clearly your voice
The way you would seem to sing
When you saw us
Like music was the only way
That you could make me understand
Love
Cariño

III
I want to feel the way your voice sounded when you saw me
I want to feel the gentle brush of your fingertips on my face again
The way you held me like nothing else mattered
I wonder if you predicted this? 
If the hours of planning to trade
One island for another
To cross el charco
To settle in where everything is cold and gray and hard
If you knew all along
That someday 
Someone would pull on an hilo
And reveal the lace that is our 
Lazos de Sangre

IV
I made this so that 
It was worth it
So that the things that were shed
To hide a little bit better
Were lost for a reason
I always imagined that behind your closet door
The one you would disappear behind
To fetch treasures to 
Tuck in my hand as mom and dad guided us out one last itme
I imagined that all of your secrets hid there
That maybe you're still there
Waiting for me to come back
That the last treasure you will tuck in my hand
Will make it all make sense

V
When we look back will we be satisfied
With how we honored you? 
In the end everyday was Christmas for you
Everyday was an excuse to listen to music
To dance
To sing along
Even if you didn't know the words
Or maybe you did
I worry we discounted your beautiful mind
To make it easier
To see you transform
To see your cocoon harden before you burst free from this life

VI
In the end all I have are Lazos de Sangre
Y nada mas
For five years
I have said these words over and over
It has transformed from a lamentation 
To a hymn
Y nada mas

VII
La lengua de mi mami senti
Como 
Marbles 
In my mouth
Smooth 
Round
And so ready to choke me
I want so badly to replay every memory where you sang to me and
Understand
Translate 
Something

VIII
What happens, then
When layers 
Of mistranslation
Misunderstanding
Missed opportunities
Missing you
Distort who we are
Who I am
Who I have built myself to be
What happens, then 
When a diaspora
Re-places
Meaning
Reimagines where we are from
Meaning
Comes back together
Meaning
Rematriates
What happens, though
If we can't 

IX
There is a story I remember
Of Tainos drowning
A colonizer
To prove that he wasn't a god
I constantly wonder if I am drowning myself
In the same way?