I’ve brought your life back with me, simple things:
the warmth of your porch light casting a foggy halo
like a full moon in the December air, the bare maples
like nerve endings branching into the stars we share,
now dusting the sky here above my house by the sea.
I’ve taken the magenta gables of your gingerbread home
painting the dark icy sky in protest of yet another
winter for you in Ann Arbor as I watch the palms
in Miami tuck in their fronds and sleep like birds.
I’ve stolen your velvet shoes and watch you again
dancing salsa with snow mantling on the window sills
of the dance hall, the conga beats and bongo taps
taking you for an hour back into our other country.
I’ve kept the whistle of your tea kettle, the sweetness
of your creamy flan-de-leche bathed in burnt sugar,
and I listen again to stories you say you can’t finish
no matter how many times you travel through time
to Havana searching for memories you never had:
your grandfather’s lace shop on Calle Aguacate
the Ashkenazi roots at the Patronato synagogue
the names chiseled on the graves at Guanabacoa.
I’ve taken your walls, your paintings from Cuba
hang in my living room now. They remind me
we don’t know what home is. Even after half a life
of stepping everyday through the front door into
America, are we here or someplace else, some place
we’ll never find? I’ve opened the questions I took
from your eyes—Would you move to Cuba? Where
do you want to die?—placed them around the house
like crystal vases waiting for flowers and answers
to this longing we carry in us like an empty cage.