“The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful…”

- Genesis 6:2

Back then, had you said 'illegal immigrant' I would’ve thought you meant

your father crossed the stratosphere from heaven into earth

each evening to see you, and sometimes me when I wandered

to your trailer in the tall grass, wanting to continue our playground games.

We watched cartoons. Your mother’s hands trembled on her swollen belly

as she cooked for us. Two channels on your television felt like

Infinity with you. Then a storm came and the house went dark. We climbed

into your bed, held to each other like static. Were we supposed to?

Divided by nothing but our own hot skin, we pressed your dolls together,

girl-doll black like me but with better hair. You said, make them make love,

so I lay them down in a music box, one beside the other. If your mother came in,

we would pretend that the rain had washed their clothes away.

Maybe it was some fall of tropical water that rinsed your mother’s wedding dress

from her body in anointing, and your father, an archangel, I’m sure,

laid her there among rosaries and marigolds, sugar skulls and hurricane.

Maybe even on the train to America, you were conceived on the border,

bright child belonging to both worlds, or neither, why does it matter?

Your mother came in to bring us dinner. Instead of blaming rain,

we slammed the lid on the box like a casket. Your mother gazed down at us,

her eyes up in glass. Her hair, limp and dyed with henna, looked like

a halo in that light. You would tell me later about her miscarriage, and not

understanding, I imagined the infant crossed sky-border with no passport,

so your father carried the child back with him, wrapped in bath-towels,

soap, wet blood, dried flowers, this fragrant little tithe to God.