FOR LINA MEDINA,
THE YOUNGEST MOTHER IN HISTORY.
When your tiny belly swells up like an oversized
mosquito bite, your parents ask the village to
vacuum out the snake polluting your organs.

The exorcism does not work, so your
pregnancy is assumed to be a critical illness.
Your stomach: a tumor.

By the time your stroller rolls to the hospital,
you are over seven months heavy with child.
Five years old on maternity leave, already in
your third trimester before the first grade.

Before a craven gentleman made a walk-in
barbershop of your abdomen, he husked your
voice. Chipped vocal chords like nail polish.

You barely heard him hushing you- You were
too busy thinking of your own mother on mute.
Remember her silence and battered lips;
the consequences of obedience.

It is May 14th, 1939- Mother’s Day,
your newborns birthday. You, mother,
and child all sharing a cake. Like triplets,
or a three piece suit.
You name him Gerardo, after your pediatrician.
Gerardo, the man who offers empathy in pairs;
two baby blankets and two stuffed teddy bears.
One is always for you.

Gerardo grows up believing you are his sister,
not a medical spectacle. He is ten years old
when your father, the leaking faucet, drips the
truth. His ears feel like sour milk, curdling as
he realizes why you made a home of his hand,
collect his baby teeth in jars, always apologize
on his birthday.

The Peruvian Times wants to know who.
Who breaks a world record by breaking a
little girl? The answer is still a stubborn glass
shard suspended in your throat. Honey and tea
cures a lost voice, but what is the remedy for a
voice made victim to abduction?

I know you say that you will never name names, but
Lina, think of all the kids-turned-mimes who consider
their very presence to be an apology.

Your tormentor is still always with you.
He lives in a penthouse apartment.
Top floor of your head. He whisks egg yolks
in your cerebellums kitchen, sings in the
shower, wrecks your good linens.
His rent is without fail one day early.
Betray the barber cutting craters roughly the size of your
heart, out of your pitch. Snap his plastic comb in two.
Trim your own split ends. Forget everything he ever
taught you about intimacy.

You were five years of Easter Sunday.
Playground innocence- you were Peru’s pearl.
Five years of lavender cotton bed sheets,
your petite body as comfortable as where you slept.