Illusion of Light
“The longing for Paradise is man’s longing not to be man.”
-Milan Kundera, The Lightness of Being
Mario’s body lies still: pale skin, eyes shut, dreams
of chasing the sun. Mario’s face glistens in daylight
the day of his wake. I want to ask him, Was it that easy to leave
us? My aunt opted for an open casket, so I look at his coffin face,
study his resting smile. Remember him, my aunt says.
I focus on the speckles of water on his forehead.
The last of what remains of him slides down,
drips.
*
Mario. Just call me Mario. Not
uncle, uncle makes me feel old, he says. Mario who
uses his hands to cook, to plant, to fix things, to pull
out a lighter from his pocket, turn the flint wheel, create a growing
spark. And with his other hand, he’d hold a glass pipe:
His mouth would open and he’d inhale heat— Mario,
who chases the sun, when he’s so
high.
*
High, high, high— He chants,
lifting me up into the sky,
when I point to the palm trees
around us, I ask: how high
will they grow? He gargles laughter
in the backyard, sets me down,
he wipes sweat off his forehead
with his left arm, rays of sun
strike his body.
I think he’s on fire.
*
Through the kitchen window headlights from a passing car
strikes my aunt’s torso. She looks outside into darkness,
waits for Mario to appear. She picks up the phone from the kitchen table, dials, asks—
is my husband, Mario Ramirez, in the hospital?
She spells out his name: M-A-R-I-O R-A-M-I-R-E-Z, yes
Ramirez with a Z at the end. She exhales, bows her head, places
the phone down. Cars keep passing by, beams of a lighthouse coming in and out
*
After the funeral, our black attire paints
the November sky. In his backyard
we stand like his plants: charred
with dropped bodies. The freeze from last
night took them, too; my aunt looks around
at the backyard shaking her head:
it’s like if they knew.
The warmth of the afternoon
hits my neck as I walk up
to one of his palm trees and
peel off dead leaves.
*
The call comes
from my aunt:
Mario’s dead.
We drive alongside
the night, in the distance
revolving red and blue
lights come into our truck,
a white sheet
on a rolling stretcher.
My youngest cousin
jumps like a sparkler
into my mother’s arms when we
get out the car. We stand outside
watch the flash of the lights break the sky.
*
At my brother’s college graduation party, Mario begs
me to take him to get more beer. My aunt shouts at him:
haven’t you had enough? He laughs and makes a joke,
babe come on. Outside I follow him, he lights
a pipe, and looks up at the sky. Mario who collects stars
in his eyes when he’s high.
*
A year after his death, we go through items
in storage. We separate into three different
carts: keeps, donations, and trash. My aunt
sees me looking at the only pot she took from
the backyard. She says, What’s losing one more
thing? Take it. I grab the deep heavy pot, hug it
with both hands, lift with my knees like Mario
taught me, and load it into my car. At home, I
plant a pothos plant inside it and keep it next to
my window. There it grows reaching
and reaching
*
I remember I found him in the garage two years
before his passing, pieces of an orange ceramic pot
and plants scattered all over the floor.
A bag of fresh mulch and dirt on the table
an hour glass spilling onto the floor. Mario standing
in the center, stumbling towards me, tossing me the keys,
telling me: you drive. I put an arm around him
and I lift him. In the car he says, don’t grow up.
Then, he puts his head outside
the car window, his right arm shoots out too,
grasping the air passing through him,
he laughs whisky out, I turn to look at him
and I’m blinded by the light
in his face reflecting
into my eyes.