My Mom Speaks Spanish Better When She's Drunk.

my mom speaks spanish better when she's drunk.

she's said it herself.

you wouldn't hear it anymore, but it's clear, it's there, in the way that when she's not, she's uptight held together and healed over she's wrapped all up in twine and the t's are really soft and the r's are strong and she said that when shes drunk, real, real out of it, the words just fall

out

of

her

mouth

and she knows how to hold a conversation again,

and some kind of wall got torn down or

crumbled away and the next morning it scabs over again

and i wonder if she knows it, if those trills taste like good grades and whiskey or if theyre a blanket and an escape and a pinch of cinnamon and a heartbeat

i'd never know how it feels, either way. i quit watching those cartoons a little while after i started calling my tío by his name, and a long while before the slice of her dream she saw in me withered and died like her wedding flowers, before she bought plastic ones.

i never stopped tasting red ink in my blood, but sometimes in november it fades a bit and im made of candles

and bread

and marigolds

and pieces of a life i didnt know

but they dig into my pale palms anyway

and then, just as fast as it came, it's over again, and i forget my words, and i wonder if i'll move back to the southwest, go eat fresh bread and drink something icky, wonder if it's something charred and bleeding in my core and my mom's and her mom's made of whiskey and red ink and old love

i wonder if we'd all speak spanish better when we're drunk