The most recent years of my twenties
have stacked like remnant waste shards
of stained glass.
Neatly piled near furnaces, yet
unfit for the grand cathedral design and useless now.
I can see straight through silver stain and ruby to
myself, aged sixteen.
Coming home to see my mother leaned-to against the tub.
Then seeing her shocked
out of her usual form,
positioned in her bed
like Andrea Mantegna’s most famous work.
Perished not,
but a full body of memories burned away.
I cannot dive, nor even poke a finger into
the sugging air of twelve-ish me.
It was only a’a crumbling and
some Creator has poured silica inside.
with the same right hand as me
“Mom” was
lava clinkers flowing in a small woman’s stature.
Any assessment futile as during a pyroclastic flow.
setting a daguerreotype
Twelve or before
on unsettled ground I saw both parents
plash to not catch fire in a river.
Almost being blazed to trails
of chalcedony and agate in a cave.
I, who care to sear myself again
and again on this backward descent,
can reach the krupto
which holds years like newborn karakul
susceptible to a rapacious hand.
Chill air, that accompanies one as a friend
meandering moss-laden paths
in the turning of the seasons,
in these years presses against the skin to refresh every pore.
Here I can know the smooth stone of
myself and mother in (bas-)relief, lovingly carved
in separated niches of those famed sarcophagi.
Everything is untouched by the future.
I breathe deeper in the crisp stillness.
At each inhalation
I turn my head over my shoulder
to detect smoke of flame or swell of wave before it could ruin this place.
I formulate that should the crypt flood,
I would do as Thor did
and distend my abdomen
to rescue these twinkling years from all Earth’s oceans.
If flames unstoppable were to enter,
I settle on the notion
that I would let my ash decorate the tomb.
E.R.A. Campos is a gay, Mexican-American Texan currently based in New York. They are an alum of the Brown|RISD Dual Degree Program.
GULLY MAGAZINE 