Land Sickness: A Sestina

by Bessie Flores Zaldívar





I want to slurp you like an Icee,

I say, turn off the light it’s so loud.

I’ve never slept with a white woman

before. I did not know that a single body

could be so freckled. I can feel our swaying

hours after, like the phantom motion after a boat.



Idalia Herrera & her 21-month son couldn’t find a boat

to cross the 2nd time. Their bodies, recovered by ICE,

so much later they probably couldn’t stop swaying

even on land, now used to the snatching, loud

undercurrent of Rio Grande. A water body

of Honduran blood & sweat & women.



Months after being sent back, the woman

tired of waiting, asylum-hearing pending, but

we know how that goes, arms stiff holding the body

of her son, sleeping in streets, pee-stink as sheets and ice

as meals, got land-sick, which is to say, she got sick of the loud

ness of silence. Of not hearing back. Of knowing there is no swaying



a country that has made its mind. I made my mind when swaying

on the creaking hotel bed with the freckled white woman

that if no one’s in the next room, why not be loud?

I love her, but that’s not what this is about.

Sometimes, her white hands and eyes

could drown my Honduran body.



After a cruise/cross, not everybody

gets purged of the after-phantom swaying,

it can last up to 2 weeks. Fifteen days later, ICE

repatriates the corpses. Perhaps by then, the son & woman

have stopped rocking. Their bodies get used to stillness. What about

the husband? The last text she sent him was what if I drown? Out loud



it sounds so obvious. Of course they’d drown. Understand, what allowed

this doubt was that Idalia was from Honduras. And not everybody

knows that honduras is Spanish for deep waters, so boat

less Idalia had, actually, been drowning & swaying

all her life. Technically, the lungs of this woman

shouldn’t have needed oxygen, but liquid ice.



Hondurans are boats— Always moving, fighting the loud,

deep waters and ice. Trying to reach harbor, haven, full-body.

To cease our swaying is death. I can’t stop. I’m a Honduran woman.





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