They stabbed the earth with “no swimming”
signs, hunted the caimanes to extinction,
made boots for themselves, belts to whip
our children. We’ve been renamed,
lost in the web of a foreign alphabet.
Baptism leaves us thirsty and wanting.
They told us the Spanish for river is peligro
while casting nets and peeling rocks
from their sleep, impervious to the scream
of the currents, their ears attuned to the one-
faced god. Oxbowed, reshaped, separated
from the Mother, we call on the Churún,
find our way back to be reborn among silt
and sediment into runnel and brook, stream
and arroyo. Like the caimanes, we watch and wait,
tracking each of their movements listening
for the smallest vibration. They think we’re afraid.
In our language, fear is synonymous with freedom.
