by Emma Trelles

Her strip of a kitchen the surface

Of the sun when she cooked in the eternal

Summer of our city of reinvention. Miami

Still shunned us then, if you can imagine

A place without the persistent glint of Spanish

And the way café levitates every rough juncture.

She never spoke English and what she might have

Understood about that time was buried beneath her

Eyes, alive even now in a hand-painted photograph 

Where I keep her near my own little stove. 

I never saw my grandmother make it, 

The meat arrived silvered and flecked

With olives and the knowledge of a woman

Of obsidian will, who survived by refusing not to.

There are years since when she still visits me

Circled in blue flame, and she looks

Pleased with her unseen arrangement,

A home where she knows every tongue.

I ask her about my uncle Tito, if he is there 

With his books about astral projection and his chess board, 

If the place she now lives has the same island light of where 

She was born and where she died. She shines and says nothing.

She always preferred to listen, her face open to me, soft

As gardenias she cut from the yard and set in a cup of water

Beside my bed. I ask her what the recipe was 

For her carne fría, if I will again taste 

Its cold and wondrous salt. To this, she lifts 

Her hand and presses it to my heart.

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