The Island Within

The Island Within

BY RICHARD BLANCO

I'm still thinking about your porch light

like a full moon casting a foggy halo

in the frigid air last night, the bare oaks

branching into the sky like nerve endings

inches away from the frozen stars,

the pink gables of your Victorian home

protesting yet another winter for you

captive in Ann Arbor as you practice

mambo by the fireplace. I'm following

your red-velvet shoes to conga beats

and bongo taps taking your body, but

not your life, from the snow mantling

your windows outside, 1,600 miles

away from Cuba. I'm tasting the cafecito

you made, the slice of homemade flan

floating in burnt sugar like the stories

you told me you can't finish writing,

no matter how many times you travel

through time back to Havana to steal

every memory ever stolen from you.

You're a thief anyone would forgive,

wanting only to imagine faces for names

chiseled on the graves of your family

at Guanabacoa, walk on Calle Aguacate

and pretend to meet the grandfather

you never met at his lace shop for lunch,

or pray the Kaddish like your mother

at the synagogue in El Vedado, stand

on the steps there like you once did

in a photo you can't remember taking.

I confess I pitied you, still trying to reach

that unreachable island within the island

you still call home. I thought I was done

with Cuba, tired of filling in the blanks,

but now I'm not sure. Maybe if I return

just once more, walk the sugarcane fields

my father once cut, drive down the road

where my mother once peddled guavas

to pay for textbooks, sit on the porch

of my grandmother's house, imagine her

still in the kitchen making arroz-con-leche—

maybe then I'll have an answer for you

last night when you asked me: Would you

move to Cuba? Would you die there?