"If My Body Is Dying, Tell Me You Love Me" by Jacqueline Jiang

Tell me the veins under my skin
are safe inside your casket.
Caoba and negra lora are my favorite trees,
but you can bury me under a flamboyán.
I will still burn inside, impossible to extinguish.

Tell me you will share my stories
with the little ones who pull flowers,
running to give them to their mothers, grandmothers;
the ones who hold the ancestral passage.

They still remember me.
My name will come off their tongue
only to crawl into the mouths of those who cannot pronounce
the names carved unto my crucifix.

Tell me that to be here, with you, meant something,
when you said you loved me, you meant it.
In another life, you did not rip away even the hairs from my arms.
Instead, you took soil & carried the lashes on my eyes to water.
The moon fed me, we made love &
I blessed you before we created our home.

If my body is dying, tell me you love me.
Tell me the ones inside me are safe, bellies full,
cement walls stable enough to cover them.

Don’t tell me about the excavators & bulldozers that wait,
like vultures, to ruin me.
Don’t tell me about the contracts you’ve made,
how the people are waiting to build their homes over my bones.
Tell me about the love you had for my body,
how you promised to sustain me.

I can’t imagine a world where I am not here, with you.
What will I look like once you’ve failed?
Fight with me here, my love, while I am still alive.