Liliana Esperanza

I miss home. But I don’t know what that is anymore. I miss sun falling into the honey-colored house. The pink and the white with little flowers. The galax. That child.

She was Esperanza.

Making her way up through the trees and the brush of the drainfield, she is Esperanza.

Crawling through the tunnels of branches to the India Tree, broken flesh on her palm, crumples notes and glass jars of our mother’s medicine, coaxed from her own heart. She is Esperanza.

A trillium. A rare find worth a second look, she whispers her name, and I am surprised I even remember…

Frogg eggs, in the muddy creekbed. Siblings who sing together in the evenings and all through the night.

That child. That child who never leaves. She will be back. But until then, she’s left us her bare footprints, ten toes in the mud. She is Esperanza.