The fact is I matter.

I atom, according to chemists,

and according to abuelita, a crooked

Vibrant sun, Lo Hice; I did it,.

I let a single black dove gobble

Out of my esophagus in song. Then another, then a trail

of them, then a furious animated cloud of flocking birds away from winter and into summer.

Es la canción más difícil,

I could sing it when I had a voice, but you,

Lo hiciste muy, pero muy bien. I’m surprised that my grief didn’t turn on me hungry, stab it’s beak into my wet

organs confusing them for worms on songless nights, but it didn’t fester. Instead grief perched itself quietly along a leafless tree inside me,

Split itself into a million atoms and filled the tree voluptuously, a black dove tree, until it was ready.

Abuelita congratulated the hurt in me when she recognized my fuller voice. It was more than being

proud of how sound traveled in me, now,

How tone no longer tumbled out of me and how my pitch

didn’t branch out all crooked like lightning.

O, She was proud of the way I full surrendered to the weight of grief and let it fly out of me effortlessly,

Didn’t mask it in pop ranges and riffs, the pain was bold and held the suffering of lineages past in vibrato

In the old Mexican ranchera ways. My voice turned Chavela Vargas, turned David zaizes, turned Lila downs,

and aida Chavez, turned a million Palomas negras into a

Music from my body, my matter, my instrument that I’d

learn the Antony of

The first time I let grief surprise me.