End of the Year

The immigration agent
tells my Mother
that she cannot return to England
before the end of the year.
End of the year
she insists,
the words pinning
my Mother
against a corner of anguish.

The agent doesn't know
the wreckage
that looks back across the booth,
the undeserving solitude
accepting prison terms.

Her end-of-the-year warning
throngs my Mother's silence
with oblivion's deftest menace,
its waters
seeping unequivocally
through the tireless
little barriers of our love.

This baseless punishment
assumes
that she wanted to transgress
the innumerable limits;
that we all had the intention
for her to break into England
as if home was a place
she could break into.

The agent cannot know
her words have crept
into our house
to install the vicious threat
of separation.

The agent must not know
her hefty judgement
risks dissolving my family
ever further.

The agent must surely not know?

Crisis

Los números maceran sus venenos
en la voz de mi Padre.

Perdido en un lenguaje
de cientos y de miles
intento distinguir
el filamento quemado de sus sílabas,
la expresión cauterizada de su miedo;
la amenaza de no dar con el dinero,
de no saber
o de no enviarlo a tiempo.

Los números se invitan
a las conversaciones con mi Padre
a gritar sus magnitudes alocadas
en escalas que no entiendo;
y filtran sus ácidos letales
en las preguntas de mi Padre
que vive lejos de los que hurgan la basura,
pero cada vez un poco menos.