For you to Stay

If I could have lobbied the gods for you to stay,
I would have sunk to my knees.
Asked them to choose any price.
Diamonds and gold and dignity for
just one change: all the times I was too tired,
too impatient,
turn them to kindness. 
And if their glacial eyes did not seem too shocked, I would add,
let me remember to call her one more time.
You see, I would explain, looking at my clasped hands and then meeting their eyes,
because even if the other side is eternal, some things are best said gaze to gaze.
I didn’t know she was always waiting for me, sitting on our couch,
while I sat in the space of another country.
My auntie’s love languages were honesty, food, and freedom,
and she never told me, while she lived, how she waited for me to come home from places that were far away,
but rather gifted me the freedom of being there or not,
whispered in my ear every time I left, two jewels for my armor: you have to find your own path, and I’m proud of you.
If we’re being honest, I say to the deities, though the chill in their halls is creeping
into my human bones, I only really heard those words properly when it was too late
to thank her for them, and I just need one more chance, okay?
I didn’t know we were running out of time.

Let me call, just once, to say goodnight.
Let me not rush it, because I had somewhere else to be, because she was a safe place for
frustration to go, and don’t we always do this to those we love the most?
Their love is a sure thing,
so we can kick it safely.
She raised me, I explain, when I was not her own.
She was essential, you see.
I cannot be expected to continue forward without her.
It is impossible.
Let me make sure I make her feel like the queen she was. 
Let me make sure she feels valued. 
Loved. 

The last word would echo around the giant chamber,
every which way
until it ricocheted back to me.
In the hall of the deities,
who look at me, blinking slowly, heads slightly tilted.
“The gods do not change time,” they chime.
Their eyes are frozen in their beautiful faces, glittering like precious stones.
Their lips look carved.
I would be entranced and afraid,
If I wasn’t past feeling afraid;

if grief had not washed every other feeling smooth, like a river over gravel.
I want to stop dreaming of all the times I have not been enough.
“Especially not time you have already had.”
Their words do not echo like mine. They land
flat.

The door that leads out of the hall of the gods is gargantuan and golden, unmissable. It does not invite openness; it is always meant to be closed. I should have been brave, like a lion, I think to the golden door, as I am escorted out.

My footsteps trace the road in Rome’s oldest and most famous cemetery – the city of the dead. Very exclusive, my uncle whispered to me when we crossed the gates to bury you, and I could not imagine why that would ever matter. The look he gave me, full of raised eyebrows, assured me that, even in death, it did indeed.

If there is one thing I am sure of, it’s that you’re not here, in this exclusive city of the dead. You’re riding the red Mustang you insisted on buying, zooming through the streets outside of San Francisco. I’ll never understand why she bought that thing, your sister will say. She’ll be grinning.

I’m eight years old and running out of the school yard, ready to walk home, and you’re standing outside the front gate, holding out your hand. Did you think I’d let you walk home alone? I want to hear all about your first day in an American school. And I burst into tears, because will the other kids ever like me, zia?

You’re letting me read Time magazine, and we’re curled up in our respective armchairs after I come back from school and watching Murder She Wrote, Star Trek, and M*A*S*H. We play Cruisin’ USA on the N64 I begged for, and you buy me my first Mac. We play Warcraft for hours. You teach me all the cheat codes, and many years later, in a meeting room on the other side of the world, when I want to say we need a solution, I will find myself muttering, “Unite the clans.” I look around the room for you.

You’re reading another book, and I remember that you once took the California bar for fun and passed, and did I ever tell you that it instantly became my standard for what smart looks like? You never hid if something was hard, but you were effortless anyway, and I never once thought nerdy was uncool, and when I run up to you to tell you about a series I just read about called Harry Potter, the third book just came out, you’ll take me to the library, the one in the middle of the forest. I will grow up far away from the pain of the early years, and I will learn, slowly, to trust that I am safe. I believe you can do anything, you will say to me always, all the years I am growing up, and I will ask you, once, why you are always repeating yourself.

I look up at an overcast sky and I know the gods will not help and so, here is how it really goes: you’re wearing one of the dresses you loved when you were younger, dropped waist and swishy, and damned if you weren’t a looker, but you never cared about it. Your hair is cut short and snappy, just how you like it, and there’s a book tucked under your arm. You look around at this grey cemetery. “No thanks,” you say to the audience, smiling, “I’m off back to San Francisco. This is much too dreary, and I haven’t seen New York in much too long. And you,” you’ll look right at me with those emerald eyes that I happen to know even the gods don’t have, “you don’t spend too much time in this sad place, alright?” And you kiss everybody who loved you goodbye, and although we’re crying, you are not afraid to go, and you walk right on out of there, past the staring keeper with the directions, and you are light and unstoppable and fierce and kind, just like you were in life. At the last second, you turn and wink at me, and then, just like always, you’re on your travels once again, showing me how it’s done, to skyscrapers and the Pacific Ocean, and I can just hear, one more espresso and please, darling, don’t let anybody make you feel small, because you are an empire.

There. You don’t like roses, so I leave your favorite, happy field flowers, resting my hands on the stone for a moment. What would you say to me if you were here? One last jewel for my armor: I believe you can do anything.

There. Safe travels, zia.

I walk out of Rome’s cemetery, and although I cannot yet muster a wink, for the first time in a long time, as I put one foot in front of the other, the beginnings of a fierce smile.