13 “Nubes de Crema y Azúcar” by Luis Garcia

 “Adonde van?”

“We’re going to get coffee. We’ll be back.”

“No se pierdan.”

But we did get lost in that All American. Sprinting through corridors mounted with machetes, martillos, drywall, pink house stuffing and other tools and thingys, we’d run like kids who play in crops of corn on the countryside with their Lassie dogs and big farmhouses in the background, disappearing into the stalks, trying to prolong a day of hard work.

“Nos vamos a levantar bien temprano. Hay mucho que hacer.”

There were no crops, just tools, and people. I’d roam the aisles and smell the sawdust of cut up lumber, rubber plungers, the aroma of soil in the garden section, and the drums of opened mixed paint. I’d get lost like a golden haired boy. I’d take pit stops at the coffee stations set up all across the warehouse, pouring tierra down my throat. Five packets of sugar and five creamers. El café de mi papa era negro like the nights he spent en su país cortando leña as a kid, black like the Rio Grande en una noche sin luna. Sin azúcar. Sin crema.

Ahora como adulto I have a crop of mugs that rest behind the cupboard of my kitchen with dust and lint settling in the ceramic, vessels gifted to us for a moment of single use. With age coffee became more than nuestro pan de cada dia, a wormhole, a portal to relive the stories of the past. A still stopping time at the dinner table, pictures that would erupt and cover my marriage with the excitement of discovery like that of the new world. Reshaping and redefining the land we falsey mapped for ourselves. A thirst for memory that quenched the dry possibility of boredom that comes with routine.

“Una vez estaba caminando y en un rincón de la calle encontré un montón de cuerpos cortados en pedazos, yo era chamaco, como usted, poco menos de edad. Deseo que nunca mire algo así. En ese tiempo muchos sufrieron en mi país. Pero sí extraño. Un dia te llevo a la subida de un volcán, muy bonito que está.”

We’ve come far, with our stained teeth and earthbound breath, to get to the point where instead of using la tierra como un remedio para nuestros dolores en vez lo usamos para rescatar los tiempos oscuros que nos dieron vida. A means to remind us that new is old and ancient. En tierra llena de minerales sombra granos de café que rescatan la historia de sangre y la luz de mi matrimonio.

My wife said, “I like the idea of coffee.” Perhaps someday our kids might run around en la finca con ojos castaño y pelo negro. Growing tall and large bajo nubes de crema y azúcar.