CPITS writing workshop with Jorge Lujan 4/12/88
I am in my mother’s arms, the long sun in my eyes. I am mesmerized by her red lips and the jungle print of her flared skirt that later became a pillow for my grandmother’s couch. My jowls quiver with baby fat, my milk eye squinting in the sun, it’s Easter, I drool on my mother’s arms in the unbearably hot sun. By the same white car with its dusty blue top, where moments earlier my grandparents stood sternly gazing at the camera, all bright colors in my mind, all this fuss, my hand clutching red and green ribbons under my chin and I’m scratching scratching. I chew down on her arm and a rocking motion jiggles all the colors into a swirl. At the age of two, gazing out of this photograph, I see a woman older than my mother in a red dress, and an embroidered tapestry with mirrors. She is writing in a book and all those controlled marks that grown-ups call writing, I sweep my arms across the paper and tables making all this writing of lessons into vortexes. This woman has no children. Her grandmother is dead. She is much sadder than I can imagine. I have no words for this kind of sorrow that slips from her eyes in all the colors of the world like a river . She is in a classroom filled with children writing, a tall man sings poems about when he was five. There is not much difference between us, we are the same under the skin. She has collected many facts in her 35 years while I am a clean slate about to begin.
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