The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry

Dear Joaquin

This may never reach your hands. It is unlikely that it will. With your mama watching her nest like a jealous hen and Rosaura keeping you drugged with sex and her witch's brews. You are lucky if you still know your name, much less remember me, the woman who truly loves you. Joaquin, I wait for you in America. My love, I come home from the factory every day to an empty, cold room. I am drinkinga glass of our favorite wine—you once said my skin tasted like this— and writing to you, sealing all my hopes in this envelope. This is unbearable, mi amor. How could you abandon me when I needed you the most? Do you know that after my mother caught us on the beach that night she locked me in my room and called the priest in to confess me? I felt like a murderer on death row. I told him I was almost eighteen, a woman now, older than my mother when she had me. He refused me absolution and walked out of our house. Mama came in yelling, mala, perdida, and said I was no longer her daughter . On my birthday that Sunday, Joaquin, I got two gifts from my family: a suitcase and a one-way ticket to New York City. But you must have heard all this. At first I thought you would come to me, but ten months have passed and not a word. My sister finally wrote me that you were hiding in your mother's house, from my mother's fury and the priest's tongue, and about Rosaura. You, hiding like a frightened child. You, my brave Joaquin of the night, my valiant Joaquin of the moon, the sand, skin, and wine. Hiding behind your mama's big bottom, under Rosaura's mambo skirts. I will writeto you every day of this long winter. My letters will gather like a storm cloud over your clear blue island sky until they burst in a downpour. The passion that you awakened in me will shadow you, Joaquin, until I come home to claim you. You are my man. In the meantime, forget about Rosaura. That bruja has put you under a spell. Don't eat any85 Dear Jaquin thing from her cocina. And keep my image in your mind, Joaquin. If this page should find its way to you, write to me and tell me how it is on the playa now. Tell me how it is to feel the sun on your skin in November. Amor y besos Olga 86 ...