9

When i was 9, walks to the park were caked in song. horns blew for a language unlike mine, trumpets fastening the belts on a hot summer mood.

Stereo cages rang, calling attention to a ring of salt and pepper men (puerto rican "papis," i think they called it); they'd find a spot central to the park's amusement, losing their throats to a game of checkers and bets placed over dominoes.

I trudged to the asphalt, dirt on my shoes, breathing in a hot park filled with smoke and broken spanish. a precocious kid aware of my difference, i sat alone at the swingsets; too shy for the sprinklers, too oddly dressed.

"Coco! mango! cherry!" the icee man would sing, & the red swings kicked my innocence with tangled chains. my defeats would collide in deafening tune while i swung lower than the other kids, rich with youth’s absence, and the wind refused to push me with them.

Still fluffy in the cheeks, night would brew and i'd lie hidden beneath bedsheets, safe and brightened by night lamps. i exhaled an existence into the black between my hands, holding onto little skin and bones until the sun crawled through windows twice my size.

—

When i was 9, it seemed happiness could run dry, like my eyes when i'd risk it all to taste the sun. but a fever still clung to the dust in my shoulder blades, squeezing life out my stiff neck, setting fire to limp hands that learned to fall and fall outside chalked lines.