That Girl

That girl
too Cuban to understand
that the room was poor.

Memory does not return whole.

It comes back
as floor
as heat
as an old television
as a dress on the body
as shoes on the feet.

My grandmother
and my aunts
dressed all of us.

They took fabric
that had already lived
bent over it
measured it
cut it

and somehow
made girls
out of remnants.

A hem.
A ribbon.
A sleeve.

The quiet proof
of being cared for.

And somewhere
between the port
my father’s hands
and whatever the sea
allowed to arrive

the best pair of shoes
I ever had
landed in his hands

then landed
on my feet.

Suede.

Not new.

They had belonged
to another child first

had crossed
another floor
another room
another life.

And still
they came to me.

No box.
No paper.
No explanation.

Only my father
bringing home
a softness
the world had already touched

and placing it
beneath me.

Imagine that

a country
with stones in the rice

and my feet
in suede.

A house
with very little

and me
standing there
adorned.

That girl
did not know
she was poor.

She knew cloth
could become a dress.

She knew shoes
did not have to be new
to arrive like mercy.

She knew a father
could bring tenderness home
without calling it love.

And there she was

small knees
white dress
secondhand suede

too young
to understand scarcity

old enough
to feel blessing

when it touched
her feet.

My memory is fragmented.

But maybe fragments
are the truest things I have

the dress
the shoes
the floor
the hands

the pieces
that survived me.