Dear Time,

now married, i’m in you different, in love

deeper, legally, under god and in front of my mama,

i know love different, love is a measure of you,

to love is to say i put my time next to your time,

i tie your time round my breath, sync my life

to your chance. stupid love, stupider still to get married,

i tie my time to you, to you who knows most intimately

what is wrong with me, who has seen me at my most naked,

ass out, my toothless ashy soul naked and cold

and shameful in front of god, what a thing, love, i am so happy

to be stupid this way. there’s a scar on the sidewalk

out our back door, a break in the ground that looks somedays

like a heart and somedays like Mexico, that’s racist,

he’s not Mexican but the first time my grandma was asking questions

about him she asked what kinda mexican is he? and I told her

Venezuelan so now I call him Venezuelan-Mexican when I want to be cute

and no this isn’t me canceling my grandma

because you, time, you cancel all grandmas, but she was speaking

within the limits of the language she has, pressing into that wall

for understanding and my grandma isn’t racist she’s difficult and careful

and nosey and serious and simple and a touch cold

and funny and a little mean and she spends her time in the kitchen

cause that work is how she loves us and she’s exactly the kind of poet

i want to be when i arrive deeper and frailer into time. so much of her time

she tied up in a man whose hands would cut thru space

to misunderstand her, to blacken the days around her eyes,

and she says she loved him, loves him, will love him. who could

we be if time loved us, if we spent our time in love, if we could see

what love has in store for us? who did i marry?

what kind of poet will i be at the edge of him?