Are we all with acute loneliness, chronic patients trying to recover the will to love? ...Sometimes the love of another wounded one acts like a salve… - Julia Alvarez

It's UPS
with two parcels! ...
a handsome lad, guesses it's my birthday
and asks how old I am. He acts surprised
he's a decade younger. We linger at the door
one of us is not immortal anymore.

The uncles ate seconds and rose in a chorus
...empty plates glowed like the eyes of the spellbound.

Mine was an oral culture, full of storytellers, but reading and writing were not encouraged. (No public libraries, no free press!) Coming to the United States suddenly thrust me into a world where I was an alien, where I spoke the language with an accent. This abrupt and painful “translation” led me to the company of books, the homeland of the imagination where all were welcomed. In trying to master my new language of English, I had to pay attention to words, their little reputations and atmospheres, their exact weights and balances, their smells and sounds and textures…