since I walked this barren ground.

By robbing I don’t mean

permanent state powers

but more or less how this sorrow is borrowed.

Y mis hijas? the ones I’ve yet to have,

they live between the desire of my breasts and

a future I cannot promise them to have.

My tears are named after a woman whose cupped palms held

fresh water for all her animals to drink, how she pulled from

the inside well of self-springing when her pleads to the sun

dried out like cowhide.

By barren I don’t mean unable to bear fruit.

Maybe I misjudged the living desert, until antelopes

sprung out from canyons in Zion, their red fur

minerals manifesting in rock.

Once, I believed my fertility could bring

balance back to earth. Once I thought

I shed the burden of widows.

I know the missing,

my unnamed daughters

this fertile earth.