LA ÑAPA

Sometimes I think I became the woman
I am by accident, nothing prepared
the way, not a dramatic, wayward aunt,
or moody mother who read Middlemarch,
or godmother who whispered, "You can be
whatever you want!" and by doing so
performed the god-like function of breathing
grit into me. Even my own sisters
were more concerned with hairdryers and boys
than the poems I recited ad nauseum

in our shared bedrooms when the lights were out.
"You're making me sick!" my sisters would say
as I ranted on, Whitman's Song of Myself
not the best lullaby, I now admit,
or Chaucer in middle English which caused
many a nightmare fight. "Mami!" they'd called,
"She's doing it again!" Slap of slippers
in the hall, door clicks, and lights snapped on.
"Why can't you be considerate for once?"
"I am," I pleaded, "these are sounds, sweet airs . . .

They give delight and--" "Keep it to yourself!"
my mother said, which more than anything
anyone in my childhood advised
turned me to this paper solitude
where I both keep things secret and broadcast
my heart for all the world to read. And so,
through many drafts, I became the woman
I kept to myself as I lay awake
in that dark bedroom with the lonesome sound
of their soft breathing as my sisters slept.