what can I offer in space for a name? – Ari Vargas

i.

ii.

iii.

iv.

your ritual of return. stirring hips

on your way to ceremony. blood

and thickness of silence you called/

drank wine. we, of

unknown origin. a plunge into

psycho-domestic nausea / all this

bending all this caring i did not

want to care like this. reciting words you read

somewhere before. or maybe chewed.

was i created?

i found your letters 6

years after your passing.

this, is a scripture i cannot forget.

men who abandon. my mother’s father

who abandoned. men who perform God and Divinity

yet forget their kin. forget how these woman

hands can hold you, and so well.

it is better they leave us anyway.

ubiquitous breakfast seen thru familial

windows in Peru. fresh bread, avocado, cow’s milk

cheese, olives, butchered ham.

sitting sweetness of maracuyá if

the money’s right.

bite into ritual. swallow into loss.

i sit without you in front of me

still feeling your stirring, brewing

comfort in your cocina. i pray

your name will come to me in a dream

my tongue tied to the rhythm of your language.

i need to feel your arrival.

Ari Vargas is a femme diasporic artist, lesbian & comrade. She is a current Emerging Artist with the National Queer Cultural Center & has premiered work throughout the Bay Area. Obsessions: shame, remembering, intergenerational belonging, oceans. follow her on Instagram @diasporicdyke / twitter @sadperuviankwee.