Chanclas, Find Our Ground

here in an unfamiliar universe
of beginnings, spattered into being
is essence, la familia:

el papá, carrying
la niña as he carried her in his
heart-womb for nine months,

she—awash in internal waves,
salt-floating until arrival, ancestral
song woven into her body

from his and her mamá’s whose
belly-strong wings have given her flight
into the unfathomed, whose

flower-milk breasts nourish,
and her sister, in shawl-sheltered
comfort, whose cells keep

multiplying love—all unwavering
survivors, nameless faces,
amid the turbulence of politics

that can cut them apart like
paper dolls and send them
stumbling onto separate paths.