The Lightning Dreamer (5 page)

Tula comes to us
with her dilemma.

 

Her choices
are narrow.

 

In a mother's eyes,
she can be only
a monster of defiance
or an angel of obedience,
nothing
in between.

 

So we send her to the library,
a safe place to heal
and dream . . .

Each time I read the freedom verses
of Heredia, I become more and more
aware of poor old Caridad's
horrifying youth.

 

She was a slave.
She belonged to my family.
There is nothing I can do
to give back those lost years,
but I do have a voice.
I can speak of her
sorrows
on paper.

I study verses with a drumbeat rhythm
like pounding music.

 

Other poems are sea waves, calm
and soothing.

 

Just as often, poetry is a free
dance
       of birds in air
               swooping
                       and dipping

 

in surprising
      directions.

 

I discover a mystery
in each verse;
the stillness
between words.

Counted lines of sorrow for a sonnet.
Rapidly rhymed beats of fury.

 

My own verses soon flow,
shrieking and groaning
from my smuggled pen.

 

I walk with empty hands,
letting the rhythm of footsteps
turn into silence or bird song—
I never know which to expect.

 

Time and distance vanish.
        I feel lopsided
               like a tree that reaches
                   toward sunlight
           rising from a rooted forest
   of buried truths.
I feel the mysterious power
of growth.

When I ask Caridad
about her childhood,
she will not answer.

 

It is as if she owns
a hidden gift
that she refuses
to share.

 

I can't really blame her.
I imagine that in her place,
I would keep my own outraged
treasury of secrets.

 

Just think how many
papery secrets
I already own.

Am I crazy, foolish, confused?
Do any of my poems make sense?

 

I burn my verses in the same oven
where Caridad bakes spicy cakes
before decorating them with sweet
coconut frosting.

 

My brother gives me more of his
enchanted paper, but I tell him
the magic has vanished.

 

The kitchen air grows thick
with soot and smoke, the remains
of my words inhaled as we breathe
the ashes of my poems.

 

I don't know how to destroy
the invisible part
of a verse.

We seek a way to cheer Tula.
Caring for others would help her
forget her own troubles,
so we remind her
that treating other people
the way she hopes to be treated
is God's golden rule.

 

Soon she is dreaming
of a thousand ways to help
beggars, lepers, the blind . . .

 

But her most original idea
is the one she finally chooses,
an entertaining and educational
theater
for orphans.

Silenced.
Censored.
Ignored.
Home is a place
of mute limitations,
but at the convent orphanage,
far from my mother,
I can shout
and sing!

 

Here, no one calls me “professor”
when I quote a wise poem, or “atheist”
if I question
traditional ways.

 

In the company of orphans,
I feel free of my family's
impossible
expectations.

Manuel is my chaperone,
walking me back and forth
to the orphanage. Without a brother
to escort me, I would truly feel
imprisoned.
I'm glad that I'm not
a real orphan, and I do love my mother,
I do, but I wish she could understand
my despair.

 

Why can't she see that no two people
are exactly alike? Our hearts and minds
are all different.
Only our dreams share
this same desperate need
to rise
and soar . . .

At the orphan theater, my plays
about evil vampires and heroic giants
are not considered suitable
by the nuns, who must endure
their own mute limitations.