Clouds of Doubt

Mother’s mouth was a story-telling flower,
painted in her favourite bougainvillea
lipstick, conjuring clouds of doubt
about where she was born.
 
Sometimes she’d say it was Cuernavaca,
‘the city of eternal spring’,
on the slopes of her beloved volcanoes
and the Chichinatzin mountains,
 
where dad would stop to buy her orchids.
Other times, she’d say we came from Mixtecs.
But she looked down on ‘indios’ and ‘prietos’,
only pointing out her skin colour
 
to boast how she turned chocolate in the sun.
While she resented my questions,
what else could I do? As a child,
I felt the weight she carried,
 
how she seemed trapped in her game
of concealing and revealing,
then sighs, quick laughter, silence.
My ancestors lie like budbursts in these tales.
 
 
   Indios: native Indians from one of the many indigenous tribes in Mexico
   Prietos: slang for someone who has dark skin.
 

Marina Sánchez

Poem of the Week, online, Oxford Brookes University, 2021;
in pamphlet collection Mexica Mix, 2021, Verve Poetry Press