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Marc Swan

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A Gift

For Feliciana

I came home to the smell of Lemon Pledge,
a Top Job sink, toilets that sparkled like new -
the hardwood floor so smooth
I walked on tiptoe to the bedroom
to get twenty dollars to pay her
before we drove to East L.A., top down, the wind
mussing her thick wavy hair. She wept
as she tried with words, with gestures
to tell me about home, about la guerra.

Before I left L.A., I bought a bag of groceries -
freshly-killed chickens, vegetables, fruit, a sweet.
Feliciana loved sweets. A gift
for her, for her family - six children,
two grandchildren; her husband still in San Salvador;
the brothers dead or dying; her mother killed
in a bus bombing, she had told me
with a sweep of her thickly-calloused hands. Hands
that ironed my shirts, polished my floors,
dragged my garbage, bag by bag,
to the dumpster up the hill.

 

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