Page 36 of You've Got a Place Here, Too

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strewn around as decor, and some of my clothes tightly

folded in a corner, and the little toy plane

I carried to every home I had ever known found a new

runway on Melody’s nightstand.

It was a different kind of dream.

All my wonderings for a semester and a half made flesh

in Melody’s arms, and thighs and laugh and whispers.

But being alive in a new puppy love

and being dead to the world went hand in hand, I learned.

I missed phone calls and responded to Mami and Tía with delayed

texts. I turned in assignments with only minutes to spare.

For two weeks, I went back to my dorm to shower and change,

go to classes, and then would meet up with Melody at her place.

The day before my final midterm, I looked up from a morning

in bed with Melody, and Tía had left me three voicemails in a row.

I realized the last time I spoke to Mami had been the week before.

I called Tía. “Muchacho del carajo. Angelo, where have you been?”

There was no note of a joke in her voice, fear vibrated on each word.

I cleared my throat. Melody looked up from her laptop. “Is

Mami okay?” I asked Tía quietly in Spanish.

Tía sighed. “No, no she is not. You need to come home.”

It was Melody who called the airline

to ask about emergency flight options.

She was the one who drafted an email

for me to send to my professors

explaining my mother was having

emergency life-saving surgery

and I needed to leave the state, thereby

missing my midterms.

She texted Josh, who drove over a duffel

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