My Daughter’s Cracked Lips

And my dad’s barrita de manteca de cacao

Photo by Rodrigo Flores on Unsplash

Back when cigarettes used to be
manly bullets of tobacco —
the only thing capable
of killing cowboys.

When they didn’t need to hide to aim
or pretend to be newfangled
entitled Millenium pens
in no need of flame.

Making the smoker
a mythical creature
in the pages
of a fábula —
a fable.

A time when they were simply called
what they were;
un pitillo,
un cigarro, un cigarrillo,
un canuto, o un canutillo.

In those times you needed fire
if your lungs
you wanted to turn
into a funeral pyre.

In those times you needed those
boxed matchsticks.
Those little jingly wooden beatboxes
bouncing to the beat of the smoker’s strides.

Used to solve crimes
by detectives and novelists alike.
And that’s where this plot begins;
in its reference
at a time when
I thought it was a crime.

Su cajita de manteca de cacao.
His little box of cacao butter.

The cacao butter box

was a quarter of a matchstick box.

He kept it religiously
in his pocket
for his lips;
his cracked lips,
his tired lips,
his sad lips;
his lips missing the cold of the mountains
his parents were born in.

Just like my lips.
Just like my daughters.

I used a chapstick for mine these days
pretending they are on a bed of spearmint.
And I keep that memory with as much care
as he kept his mantequita de cacao.

I think about it
when I bent at my waist
and put some
on my daughter's lips.

Hers is different;
belonging to these times
in a way that balm
can only exist now.

As if this wasn’t the future
and we are still
waiting on a tomorrow
more truthful.

One fully powered
by nuclear mini-combustion;
and a cap…
powder blue…
that would look best on a flying car
or on an old Plymouth.

Seeing her,
caressing her face,
listening to her
sound her love confessions,

I think of his scrawny frame.

Under the punishing sun
of our vapory equatorial streets;
walking with his thumbed bible
under his arm,
in his valiant frame
lacking stature and
making up for it with bravado
that was fractured.

The Napoleonic bravado
plaguing men like him
punching those in the nose
trying to stomp him
and even if some of them
were never foes
attempting to oppose him.

Up and down from oily and smoggy buses;
hustling to get food on two tables
struggling to find nourishment
that would make him whole.

The desire for meaning
playing tug of war with his soul;
the same cartoonish demons
camping on my sternum.

Toiling to make my blood pump
with lips that don’t ache
and a heart
that never stops longing;

the events that ripped us apart
I ponder
and the ones that will forever clump us
as if we are an ephemeral daisy chain
of Cosmic dust and plunder.