Rain pelted the tin window blinds & inside, it seemed that steamy petrichor rose up from the warm tile floor.

Cold drops of rain on my ankle wrestled me from my sleep. I heard a bottle be uncorked and water slither onto a palm. Even in my fever & in all her holy fragility, my mama ran a warm, wet hand across my neck,

over the tops of my legs,

under my shirt and all over my belly,

on both of my cheeks.

A menthol hand put an aspirin in my mouth & held a glass of lemon grass tea to my lips. I saw a fruit fly at the bottom of the cup and still swallowed, “por favor, doña, no me toques. Yo…Te voy a enfermar.”

“Que linda,” she said sweetly through a cracked tooth, dismissing me while noting my attempted Spanish. & as I persisted my sputtering in a phantom tongue, she issued a final & silencing “ya.”

She left the bottle of blessed water on the dresser by an upside down clock & her dolls in crocheted ball gowns. When I next woke, mama’s eyes from behind my cousin’s cat eye glasses & curly bangs watched me, half concerned, half teasing.

“Tell her to please not touch me, she can’t get sick.”

“She won’t listen.”

“What does she keep rubbing on me? That bottle over there?”

“Crazy old people magic water.”

A blessing, a salve: my mama betraying her Pentecostal heart in case older epistemologies might break my fever. What a balm to know we belong to each other regardless of the seemingly insurmountable linguistic obstacles;

in spite of the Atlantic Ocean;

& even before God.