Flower Bones


Along the road, I find cow head calaveras

Ice garbage roadkill of our winter,

Petrified with exhaust.


But there are things that grow in the snow

like flowers named Xóchitl's

with her pink bleeding petals

and hieroglyphic stems

that stretch back to another

time and place.



Xóchitl is a snow flower

her roots grow like woven silk

with a historical legacy.

In her center is a kernel of corn.

I pick her seed of hope, and

replant it on

Borderlands of my life.

Laws and man try to stop her growth

but I carry her into spaces-

to the top of buildings, below city bus seats,

on the sidelines of graduations, in rows of protests,

online, in a one line status update.

She is always there, my beautiful chestnut,

rosewood brown corn seed.

Until I plant her

pick her,

am her,

Xóchitl.