Sigma Tau Delta Convention - Grime

Today, I found out I was chosen to attend the Sigma Tau Delta Convention in NOLA. It's a great privilege to be able to share my work on this level. The theme for this year is "Second Lines & New Beginnings." I realized I wanted to write something inspired by my culture, Mexican culture, and I remembered my poem "Dirt." Things just kind of clicked for me from there. In total, I spent about four days on this piece, with about three rounds of editing to make sure everything was the way I wanted it. 

Grime

Papá, now that I'm looking at your hands for the last time, I noticed that the space under your fingernails is clean for the first time since I've known you. Your job as a mechanic was unkind to your body, but especially your hands. I remember how motor oil and dirt clung even to the creases of your calluses following a long day of work, as if it came from beneath your skin. I wonder what the morticians did to get it out. They've laid you in a coffin made of a deep, dark mahogany and dressed you in a crisp tuxedo. You used to hate dressing up. Did you coordinate your own funeral, or was it done for you? Did you even have a will? 

Tías, tíos, and primos, some of whom drove here from Mexico, are here for you, sitting in the chapel next to the funeral parlor, waiting for mass to begin. They don't know about our cold war; Most of them don't want to talk to me. I tried to stay away from them, as well as the few that do. It was impossible to avoid everyone, of course. Warm hands thumped against my hollow body. Lips pressed against my cold cheeks. Blessings were passed to me through the sign of the cross, always in those same four spots: forehead, chest, right shoulder, left shoulder. Some of those blessings were meant for the girl that they used to know. I don't correct them. I bow my head and accept their prayers.

I'm more prepared to face the disgusted looks of people I hardly consider relatives than the consolation of those who love me without knowing me. It's like being trapped in a revolving door and missing the exit, over and over. I should have told them that the last time you and I spoke was almost eight years ago, so that they wouldn't feel bad. They'd hate me if they knew that that time away from you allowed me to grow as you quietly rotted away from liver disease. 

Bundles of flowers in vases decorate the funeral parlor you and I are in. These will be our last five minutes together, alone, before I have to join everyone else. There are white roses. Lilies, baby’s breath. White, white, white. Too clean. Everything is too clean. The last time you hugged me, I was sixteen years old. You reeked of beer and sweat, having worked a long shift. You left a black smudge on the shoulder of my shirt, clear enough that I could make out your fingerprints. You made me feel brave. You were a real man, I thought, and I was your blood. There was no reason that I couldn't be like you. 

I want to shake your shoulders to tell you that. To get you to open up your eyes so that we could pick things up from where we'd left off and find your wild bush of beard covering up a grimace meant for me. That was impossible now. Your beard had been tamed, shaved down to a neat stubble. I didn't get the chance to say this to you either, but I'd envied how easy it was for you to grow it out. I hoped to be able to have a beard of my own, to let the few hairs on my body spread down to muscular forearms, and to work so hard with my hands that they, like yours, got dirty.

From a few feet away, over the edge of the coffin, I can see that the yellow tinge of your brown skin gives away the cause of your death. You wouldn't recognize me if you saw me today, with my sharp jaw, thick brows, and short hair dyed a different color. Would this have been enough to finally get you to call me ‘hijo’?

I notice a few items when I approach your coffin, placed there by relatives. A plastic bead rosario had been slipped into your outer breast pocket with the cross sticking out, acting as a sort of badge to flash for Saint Peter, a plea for him to unlatch the pearly gates. What upsets me is a toy-sized bottle of alcohol, Jack Daniels, resting in the crook of one of your arms. Who placed the poison that killed you next to your dead body? I stare at it hard, hating it. Despising it. Briefly, I imagine myself drinking it then and there, suffering through the burn of it out of resentment. I don't, though. I slip it in one of the pockets of my slacks, thumbing the ridges of the aluminum cap. Before I can realize that my eyes are filled with tears, they're already running down my face. 

I don't know what it is that you found at the bottom of each bottle. An escape? Relief? Happiness? What I do know is that I will never find what you saw, no matter how hard I look, and I will never discover what it means to be me in the dark grime of your palms. If we had patched things up earlier, how many more conversations would we have had? How many more arguments? How much would one more month, one more year have done to get you to change your mind?

The funeral attendants are coming. Soon, they'll be sealing your coffin shut so that they can lower you into the ground. The answers to all of my questions will be buried with your body. Our cold war, too, will be six feet under. I can't be mad at you anymore. I am your son, a self-made man, living the life that was meant for me. Adiós, papá. Goodbye.