What I’ve learned:
by Carlos Andrés Gómezmy six-year-old daughter will try
to teach anyone within earshot
something she first heard about
two minutes ago, if you ask a toddler
(mid-meltdown) to choose between
a lollipop right now or their birthday
party next weekend, they’ll always pick
the former, and a pandemic
ain’t got shit on happy hour
in Georgia. My recurring nightmare:
a meteor approaches,
keloid inferno blisters open
the Atlanta skyline, but no one
notices because they’re too drunk
on Scofflaw and sucking tongue
with their neighbor. Who am I
to judge? Look, we once lived
on a block where gunfire was so
frequent and close I’d only flinch
when the air’s pinch let me know:
they’re aiming this way. No one flinches
anymore. We’re two years deep and
how many fucks are left? Why
not share a pint with dimples
on the corner stool? A lifetime?
Is that still what’s expected?
An ocean away, as bombs fall,
kids can’t wait to go back
outside to play in the rubble.
Sometimes they find something
still glowing, pretend it has magical
powers. It does. I don’t let my kids play
with toy guns. In fact, I don’t even call
them guns, go out of my way to use
another word, say water launcher or rocket
ship, who cares if it makes sense? My wife,
apparently. It’s my favorite magic
trick: building a world out of language
or out of language unearthing another
world. My three-year-old son asks me:
Papi, someday will I grow up to be
your shape? And I think about
the scattered wreckage of my
geography. How many shapes
have I inhabited? What, too often,
dances toward the light to conceal
something else in darkness? What
grace do I perform to conceal another
mundane violence? I can’t see his face
when he asks the question, my son’s back
turned away, as my shadow stretches
beyond his clumsy frame sprinting
reckless, the sun about to bow its devoted
crown beneath the horizon, my shape
like a distorted map daring my youngest’s
tireless little legs closer and closer to
the road at the top of the hill. Neither
of us know what might be waiting, where
the light and dark part ways, the day
between us, as I watch the pure
abandon of someone barreling, eyes
closed, toward the growl of a car’s
engine as he sprints out of sight.
