Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

Sundays
by Stephanie Navarro Lopez

THirty-FIFth
Contest
Third Place

at tia’s house on sundays
while the soup boiled over on the stove
the adults spoke of
Home.

my mother spoke of baskets weaved
and barefoot runs
through the muddy grass of
San Pedro.
she spoke of crowded buses
stolen bicycles
tall green trees and their whispering
leaves
as well as her cries
for abuela.
she remembered the smell of
her death
as a mixture of
the bluest sky
pinecones and coffee
beans.

when my father spoke of Home
he remembered Garifuna
children
red cloth
the dance
of the wind the
wood of the kayaks
coconut soup
mango trees and
the shot of a gun
that sounded like
the emerald toucan song
of sad blue
seas.

my tia never spoke of Home
but you could see it in her hips
as her and my
mother danced
to the jagged ends of
Honduran punta.
i could hear it in her laughter
bright as the sun rising in
Tegus.

i can almost taste Home
her white sands and brown
faces.
i see her in the tears
of my parents
who wanted so desperately
to go
Home.

i wonder if Home speaks of me
the girl born in the waterfall
at the foot
of Pulhapanzak
whose parents ran away with her just
to catch a
dream
they did not know didn’t
exist.

we don’t go to tia’s
anymore.