A woman walks to a river with her children.
A river walks her children to the woman she birthed.
For years, the river furrowed inside of her.
For years, the woman would walk into the river
of herself and ask for a husband who did not plant
dahlias behind her eyes. Please, she would ask the river,
‍my body is not a garden —  I can’t live forever
dug up. But the garden of her body loved her children,
so much so that she drowned them in love.
Or, she loves them so much they drown.
For one second she knew, in the rill & root
of her marrow, that a garden is just a graveyard
that is still alive, a resting place for someone else’s
hunger, the teeth of him still tearing at the branches of
her tributaries, her estuaries, the edges of her eroding life.

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*”La Llorona - Angela Aguilar (Letra).” YouTube, YouTube, 28 Mar. 2018