Editor’s note: for mobile users, this poem is best viewed in landscape mode.

Sara Borjas

Narcissus Tells a Ghost Story

Look          at my mother              it’s hard to believe                                   we aren’t

already ghosts                that llorona          cries                 in the morning

the constant trickle           of tv dramas    & doctor bills    lighting her face

before she drinks             beside a candle        I turn                            the pages

of a Danielle Steele novel:                     a ballerina                makes it 

in Hollywood:                                     half         in my world                     half          

in hers             what I cannot                             fix             is my mother’s grief

for another life                 with respect            and a Lexus                          sex

her cries clatter   like bones   knocking                 an old door

her wet face          sweeps me up      like a river           shuts me 

smooths my want               like river rocks                    says don’t need

anything more                    than this couch    this glass of wine

sometimes        I think daughters             are pieces of fathers    

no one can breach      we cannot step through     this river

or out of it             my hair  crawls                  out the window

strand  by strand                 so my parents     don’t notice

   the gurgling                       so many days  I spend       killing       

it’s hard   to write                                                              we are alive

Sara Borjas

Love Poem

              Here is one way

love granulates: 

              he tells you 

he no longer loves you 

              and you carry 

your enormous basket 

              of his laundry back 

downstairs. You begin 

              dating and he throws 

a lasso around your neck 

              but is too weak

to pull you back. 

 

//

I am tired 

              of men needing

 to decide if they want 

              to try to love me, 

even the ones 

              who already do. 

 

//

When they return 

              each plea opens 

me like a river, 

              but then memory 

rushes in—this love 

              is already rippled—

and reverses 

              even water, like God, 

into dust.

Sara Borjas

Letter Beginning in My Voice and Ending in My Mother’s

                Don’t act like when you warm up 
rice in the microwave tonight you won’t think 

                about the mornings you dried out coke
 on the blue ceramic plate—the one with honey 

                painted gladiolas, heat glittering 
into creases of your fingers.

                And don’t pretend when you smudge 
black mascara on your fingertips, you don’t remember

                how you held that globie for too long, 
the cauterizing flame painting ponds 

                on curled glass. You used to believe 
your hands were attractive, that your chance

                to escape Pinedale was that Nivea
gig, You, a hand model. You, your own door

                you could not open from the inside.
The most feminine thing on my body 

                is inherited. Cloak. No, cape. No, sable sequence
slit dress, dignified, slipping like wind
 
                through the Chinese Elm in our front yard. 
So many men have exaggerated this grace

                for your attention, asked, has anyone ever told you, 
and you assumed no one ever had. These men reach
 
                over the speckled, marble bar to touch your hands.
You can’t tell which you want and which you deserve.

                Sometimes, a woman wears a dress so long, 
not knowing it, she forgets her legs.
 
                Sometimes, a daughter wears her inheritance 
so long, she forgets she can change. 

Editor’s note: for mobile users, this poem is best viewed in landscape mode.

Sara Borjas

Each Day, I Have a Difficult Time Getting Started