Something happened to me when my name was changed,
bestowed by my grandfather and sung like a song,
tossed in a trash heap when they could not trill an R.
Something happened to me when I watched my Dad turn us away
from a border town restaurant with a sign in the window,
"No Mexicans or Dogs."
Sacrificial lamb gives blood to the sun,
returned as light and life, my uncle strums his guitar,
notes dancing over carnitas cooking in cedar smoke,
my tia hands me a warm tortilla and red chile
envelops me like a hug, and something happened to me.
Tears wash the walls of my jail cell, from a steel window
the world outside is close enough to touch, something happened
to me as I gazed at a campaign sign by the road with a judge's name
promising to get tough, casting his net to get re-elected.
A bullet last week shattered my friend's heart, his body encapsulated
in an iron grove, growing bullets in the cradle of his grave,
and something happened to me as I thought of my own grandson,
just a child who would rather play bad guy than cop.
I held your hands and looked for meaning in your eyes,
and something happened to me
as your tears soothed souls addicted in poverty,
enduring searing heat, turning hope into smoke.
This morning's snow left a shimmering blanket,
bunched over fields like a treasured heirloom carelessly dropped,
my bedeviled heart calmed, as I turned my face up
and sweet young snowflakes wet my tongue,
wistful and cool like angel's breath,
and something happened to me.
