How to be Brave in El Salvador

We taught each other, Ana Gabriella,
In the kitchen, in the courtyard,
Wherever Nora’s maids weren’t looking.

This was after the war and before the earthquake,
When the country smelled like coffee
And optimism was a saunter on the street,

Though there were men with rifles everywhere and cautions:
Go nowhere alone, go nowhere bearing jewelry.
Sometimes I held your hand or you took mine,

And my Spanish was incurable so we talked
By walking, by noticing the same bird in the sky,
By sinking our fingers into the bullet holes that

Splattered stucco homes, turquoise and salmon
And porcelain-colored homes. You were nine,
And had I daughter I’d have chosen you, and this was

Before you stole me roses from Nora’s garden,
Cut them with stolen scissors when they were whole
And redly bloomed. You have grown up in the meantime,

I have heard, and five years of growing at your age
Is a long time, so that last week, when your card arrived
And I saw your handwriting for the first time,

I was both humbled and surprised. Remembering
El Salvador is also always remembering you,
Ana Gabriella, and the roses I longed to carry home.