Our apartment waits on the third floor like an uphill cemetery
Mami needs to walk up to rest their bodies. She lives
among the dying and she is—grieving. The elevator stops
working so that she must walk upstairs drunk
in grief. Before this, she leaves our dead to celebrate
her sister’s life. Titi is 52 now—30 years older than her son was
when he died. She carries coffins in her chest, the coffin
keeps growing. Mami returns home to grieve
to her youngest daughter. She’s a monster only
tequila can make. She wails remembering their mother.
The coffin she carries cannot be closed or left home.
Grief unbearable like an open casket. She buries
herself next to her mother alive. Her daughter undresses
her. She retches roses on their casket. Her daughter bathes
her. Her daughter is 19. She wails, wet with grief
she won’t remember in the morning Mami, perdóname.

Mami is talking to the dead. Or maybe,
she is talking to her daughter, who sobs after she sleeps, washed.

¹ Ritual washing often occurs when beloveds, or funeral directors, wash and dress a deceased person. It is often seen as an act towards purification. Here, ritual washing occurs too for a grieving person being eaten alive and washed still.