By: Emily Shwake

Luisa Villani is another contemporary, award-winning poet who loves her aunt so dearly that she wrote a poem for her. “Watching the Mayan Women” tells of her aunt whose imprint will never disappear from her life because of what she taught the speaker. Her aunt’s memory resides even in life’s smallest moments.

Happy Auntie’s Day from Luisa to you:

Watching the Mayan Women
By: Luisa Villani

I hang the window inside out
      like a shirt drying in a breeze
and the arms that are missing come to me
      Yes, it's a song, one I don't quite comprehend
although I do understand the laundry.
      White ash and rainwater, a method
my aunt taught me, but I'll never know
      how she learned it in Brooklyn. Her mind
has gone to seed, blown by a stroke,
      and that dandelion puff called memory
has flown far from her eyes. Some things remain.
      Procedures. Methods. If you burn
a fire all day, feeding it snapped
      branches and newspapers—
the faces pressed against the print
      fading into flames—you end up
with a barrel of white ash. If
      you take that same barrel and fill it
with rain, let it sit for a day,
      you will have water
that can bring brightness to anything.
      If you take that water,
and in it soak your husband's shirts,
      he'll pause at dawn when he puts one on,
its softness like a haunting afterthought.
      And if he works all day in the selva,
he'll divine his way home
      in shirtsleeves aglow with torchlight.