Hereditary

The train tracks leading to my grandma’s house always reminded me of a spine. Curved &
ancient, a body of splintered wood & metal hinges groaned when the train was coming. & my
mom once told me that the train tracks split the town in two. Everything here is split in two. If it
isn’t the train tracks, it’s the river, if it isn’t the river, it’s my dad’s family. Over coffee & pan
dulce, my grandma’s soft voice is interrupted by what sounds like a stampede of wild horses. The
train whistles & whistles & whistles. My grandma has to repeat what she just said. Mi cabeza,
niña. Ya no funciona como antes. She tells this to her daughter, my mother. She has her hands.
The nail beds are tough & sturdy. I look at my hands now & wonder if mine look the same as
hers. Mine are ones that hate doing dishes. Ones that rub my husband’s arm when I’m anxious.
Ones that brush through my tangled, wild hair. Ones that have never touched a tomato vine. Ones
that shake & shake & shake until I remember I can take a pill for this to make it all still. My
mind. It isn’t like it was before. I try to tell this to my mom at the kitchen table. Her parents have
been gone now for over 18 years. My father has been gone for almost four. We are both
fatherless & grieving. Daughters, just girls. Just girls waking up in fright every night at 3am,
having to soothe ourselves back to sleep. I wish we still had my grandma’s home. I wish my tio
didn’t have to pay off his grief. I wish my mom could name her demons. When my grandma’s
breath finally caught up with her, did she use the last of it to call out to her mother? Aren’t we all
just waiting for our ribs to finally crack open to reveal we were our mother’s daughters all along?
Aren’t we all just waiting for the whistle of the train?

Poems are selected by Poetry Editor Lupe Mendez, the 2022 Texas poet laureate and author of Why I Am Like Tequila. To submit a poem, please send an email with the poem attached to poetry@texasobserver.org. We’re looking for previously unpublished works of no more than 45 lines by Texas poets who have not been published by the Observer in the last two years. Pay is $100 on publication.

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