Sunrise: For Luz Lizette

You asked me to sketch your bridal gown.We were so young, so innocent—you were only twenty-two.You woke up one morning, legs full of black and blues,and plummeted like an ancient temple.You slept for days.I asked you to wake up, Wake up! and you seemedto move a finger. Could you hear me in the distantcoagulation of dreams, as your blood struggled to flow, inthe land where no one speaks, the meadowsbetween heaven and earth?Could you hear meas you floated above me, crying your tearsyet happyas you looked at the earthly flowered garden you had cherished                                                 [beneath the tip of your toes?

You were my second mother, my sister, my security.

Our mutual friend asked me to write a poem about you, because I told himI had often felt your presence as an image stemming from my soul,as a transparent flesh-like figure I drew into the air about me                                                 [with my invisible paintbrush,as the incandescent sister I could almost touch, and kiss, brushingmy shoulders—

Si tú vieras mi vida ahora, ¿te alegrarías o llorarías? No sé.¿O vienes para dirigirme, porque me caigoen este pequeño hoyo que he cavado?Tantas vidas, tantas muertes, todo se acaba o comienzapara luego volar y volver a empezar.

Tanta alegría, y tus ojos grandes y la locura de tus gruesos labios y tu risaregresan a mí como ave sabia emplumadaante el pavor y desvanecer de los años.

• AmanecerPara Luz Lizette
• Diana Rivera (bio)

Me pediste que dibujara tu vestido de novia.Éramos tan jóvenes, tan inocentes—tenías solo veintidós años.Te despertaste una mañana, piernas llenas de moretones,y te desplomaste como un templo antiguo.Dormiste por días.Yo te pedí que despertaras, ¡Despiértate! y parecíasmover un dedo. ¿Me podías oír en la coagulacióndistante de sueños, mientras tu sangre luchaba por fluir, enla tierra donde nadie habla, los pradosentre cielo y la tierra?¿Me podías oírmientras flotabas sobre mí, llorando tus lágrimas pero felizal ver el jardín terrenal florido que habías gozado                                                 [bajo las puntas de tus dedos del pie?

Fuiste mi segunda madre, mi hermana, mi seguridad.

Nuestro amigo mutuo me pidió que escribiera un poema sobre ti, porque le dijeque a menudo había sentido tu presencia como una imagen brotando de mi alma,como una figura de carne transparente que dibujé en el aire alrededor                                                 [con mi pincel invisible,como la hermana incandescente que casi podía tocar, y besar, rozándomemis hombros—

If you could see my life now, would you feel happy or cry? I don't know.Or do you come to guide me, because I fallin this small hole I have dug?So many lives, so many deaths, everything ends or beginsto then fly away and begin again.

So much joy, and your big eyes and the craziness of your thick lips and your laughterreturn to me like a wise feathered birdbefore the terror and waning of the years.

But here the sun rises over the slumbering lakeas its water ripples quietlyand the willow sprouts its tiny, see-thru buds of spooled-up leavesas springtime has yet to begin.And everything that I see, the bare mountain and quivering hemlockslake and cerulean skybranch and rootseem to contain you—they hold you in the exquisite, living beauty of your pulsing soulas a light that hovers by my side.And it seems that I can see you—smiling, radiant, breathing—

you even seem to laughwith your thunderous energy, as you used to—

Luz Lizette, you are here, alive in the flaming sunrise,your spirit infiltrates everything—you pray for us in every leafin every rhizome that shoots out under the grainy earthin every mountain with grey, barren treesthat exposes yellow sheens as springtime advances,in every branch the...