Colibri
by Cynthia Salinas Cappellano
A Oaxacan tourist’s
favorite recuerdo.
The name for the miscarriage
scraped from my mother’s womb.
But I remember you
as the first trinket
on my dorm windowsill
to mimic the familiar
behind plantation style walls,
upon uprooted Muscogee bones.
Your splinter size wings loose
from their cradles edge.
Someone told me jetlag
is just our spirit
not taking the time
to understand all the histories
of the lands you fly over in an instant.
We are like each other in this way.
Passed in metal breasts
at five-hundred miles per hour
from our birthplace.
Confused as to how we got here,
to these white-washed walls and
perfectly even clay tiles.
Your oblong, square beak,
is a false imitation
of the real thing. But
on the candle-lit altar,
next to the ancestral portraits,
your slate wings
drip a puddle
I cannot clean.