Maybe this is when you first began, 
when your trip reddened and drew into 
itself. When you held your bladder 
on a twenty-three hour coach journey 
from Corrientes to Mendoza, coaxing 
the muscles in your lower body to paralysis. 
You felt the rupture as it moved 
from a satisfying crimson to a burn 
kneading its way into a small scar 
on your left kidney. How can a girl be embarrassed
all the time? What with the grief and terror and 
the world that is continually throwing up on itself. 
Let me tell you. Shorthorn cows in the fields
of Cordoba, congregating like stars. 
Sweet cucumbers, scarred with purple, 
growing behind the generator on the farm. 
The flaxen tops of espino trees, crowns
pruned into tutu skirts. A beautiful man 
with long, dark hair on the other side of Santiago,
pronouncing canella, maracuya, lluvia. 
I’m going with everything, including
memories. The moments that pass like fog,
admitting nothing. Not the children or wildfires, 
the eight-year-old, the six-year-old, the girl,
the vehicle, the charred, the riddled,
the baseless, the boy missing the missing boy,
the belly of beasts, the ashy smell of cypress,
the small son, the second son, the child
who went to pick oranges.