Virgil Suárez
Fuel
Once when I was seven
and we lived in Cuba,
my father cut his finger
on a rusty nail
of the chicken coop;
he pressed on it
until a drop
of crimson blood
formed, then fell
to darken the dirt -
“See that?”
He said. “That’s fuel.”
I didn’t understand.
When he died
in Miami thirty
years later,
of a massive
coronary, the doctor
who performed
the Code Blue -
massaged his heart -
and failed, hurried
to where my mother
and I waited
in the chapel.
Distressed, he showed
us his cupped hands,
when his fingers,
unfurled
like petals,
his palms revealed ashes,
these dying embers,
my father’s
message to us
from an afterlife:
fare for all of us
to cross the dark
together.
Page(s) 63
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