The night of Todos los Muertos
Is cold and dark
And I light a candle for my son
Out on the stoop
And another
In my weeping womb.

Come home, my son,
Come home to me.

Six weeks and two days
Is but a blink of God’s great eye.
It was my son’s lifespan
And he was less than an inch long.
I wept not from my eyes,
For my duty was to the living.

The earth’s rotation gave no pause
For one tiny child’s journey into the afterlife
After no life to speak of.

Come home, my son,
Come home to me.

The dead are beyond my abilities to serve,
But for this one task of lighting a path
With tallow wax and yellow flame
That the soul may follow back home
Where loss makes all things
Come to the full stop,
The black dot of grief.

There is no tombstone
Over which to vent my grief,
No traces of the baptism given
To a hand-sized mass of blood clots.
There is no space for my wails
In the graveyard air.

Come home, my son!
Come home to me!

The chill wind is all I hear
And the distant rumble of rain.
I would shake my little boy loose
From the heavens if I could,
Scream my anguish, my ravening rage,
But the living are there, I must be strong.
I must be silent. I must go on.

The world gives no pause, nor spare breath
For a mother’s laments.
Instead I light the candles
- on the stoop, in my soul -
And speak my prayers to the empty wind:

Come home, my son.
Come home to me.