My cousin Rosario      

I don’t usually write poetry, but here’s one I wrote six years ago as the Spirit moved me.  It was a tough time for me and also Rosario then, and I sat down and wrote this as he was pulling out of his parking space in his car to go home after spending a weekend with me after not seeing each other for over 20 years.  In those 20 years, his older brother had died suddenly and my older sister, same.  Also, his father was my favorite uncle and my father, same for Rosario, both of whom had also since passed from this vale of tears.

Here’s the poem, and the link at the bottom to where I had posted it originally on my TwoShores.net blog about my novel by the same name.

My cousin Rosario                                                    by Valerie Serrano, April 21, 2012

My past pulls out of the driveway.

I swallow tears.

 

An unnamed loneliness

slides in.

 

So many decades,

so many stories—

his,

mine,

his father’s,

my father’s,

the war they fought that

scarred their souls,

our mothers,

my sister,

his brother.

 

Back then, he was a kid,

me a teen—

the uncles,

the aunts,

the food,

the fights.

 

My past pulls out of the driveway,

tearing into the now.

 

Safe trip, my cousin

Rosario.

My Cousin Rosario