Excerpt from Meanwhile Take My Hand

Danger

You loved danger.
Some people think a tough childhood
marked your palms' dry creekbeds forever,
and thus your breaking through borders,
that propensity to gravitate to fringes, holes.

The trucks came from Ireland, from Denmark, to load fish.
You liked to climb on their tailgates
and -- as they picked up speed -- to jump,
in three, four steps, and hit the dirt.

You picked up bombs bare-handed,
come by on the old war front,
in the underbrush we found the trenches,
like wounds too deep, unable to heal.

You loved danger,
and I realize we're nothing at all without danger:
can't go through a door, go to sea, no lovers.
Time has passed since those years,
and today, the eyes of those who predicted your death
are the eyes of winter-killed finches.

Notes on a Loose Piece of Paper

Remember to call home before too long.
To see the long reeds when they are in motion.
Not to punish myself as much as that again.
To miss the last train and wait for the next.

To wash off your injured hands in the creek.
Know there is no happiness without sadness.
Feel the glass caress of morning in the kiss.
Accept what the Devil offers once in a while.

Perhaps everything can in fact change.
Perhaps there's any road at all somewhere.

Remember to tell what blocks you at every turn.
Not to speak while watching the cormorants.
Hold out a hand to the doubts and the fears.
Drive along alone without orientation.

Heroin had been as sweet as sex
she used to say, at one time.

The doctors have been saying now she won't get worse,
to go day by day, take things easy.
It's been a month since she failed to wake up
after the last operation.

Still and all, we go every day to visit her
in Cubicle Six of the Intensive Care Unit.
Today we found the patient in the bed beside hers
in tears, no one had come to visit, he'd said to the nurse.

An entire month and we haven't heard a word from my sister.
I don't see my whole life stretching before me the way I did,
she used to tell us.
I don't want promises, I don't want repentance,
just some sign of love is all.

Our mother and I are the ones who talk to her.
Our brother, with her, never said too much,
and here doesn't make an appearance.
Our father hangs back in the doorway, silent.

I don't sleep nights, she used to tell us,
I'm afraid to go to sleep, afraid of the bad dreams.
The needles hurt me and I'm cold,
the serum sends the cold through every one of my veins.

If only I could escape from this rotten body.

Meanwhile take my hand, she implored us,
I don't want promises, I don't want repentance,
just some sign of love is all.

From Meanwhile Take My Hand by Kirmen Uribe, translated by Elizabeth Macklin. Translation copyright 2006 by Elizabeth Macklin. All rights reserved.