Adriana Rambay Fernández

Entre Azul

Here

inside four shades of silence, I grow 
	      unrecognizable, birth blues in the act 

of holding on, in the wake of absence,
	      in the quickening of stagnation, 

cobalt, stone, baby, and true, blue on 
	      blue on blue on blue. 

From pressure not stillness, not breathing,
	      not breathing, I carry detritus, 

what belongs to others, what’s not said, 
	      what gets suctioned up, like a family 

secret, a collective hush, a wind sharpened 
	      in a back alley becoming gust—a push, 

a shove, a curse flung, the space after 
	      what the fuck 

and all those who remain. 
	      I fall and falling, I fail in failing 

like a cork that pops without a sound. 
	      There’s your thinking. There’s my thinking. 

The imagined pop at pop. An emptied space, 
	      a hollowing out, a haunting by a stone

gathering Rosas, Inocencias, Lolas, Enriquetas, 
	      Panchitas, y Gracielas. Their names etched 

con amor de tus hijos 
	      y Mamá. 

How dreamed she stood at the edge of light,
	      how I held first Em up to the light, 

how I last saw Victor bathed in light. 
	      I hear blue as a sound, my footsteps 

on the path to Section Seven One Nine B, 
	      where between the push push 

of a chemical flare and three watchful deer 
	      rest los niños. In perpetuity. 
	
True arrives in the blinking lights of 3 a.m. 
	      when the breath catches, chest tightens, 

sweat pools at the base of my neck, trickles 
	      down my back, like drowning, 

I say to you, like a dying fish growing large 
	      in a gull’s throat, I’m inside out.

Baby, I say to you, baby like the sky, 
	      a perpetual blue, a Forget-Me-Not, 

The silence and silencing of a dream. 
	      The end. 

Of striving, of waiting, of watching, 
	      the waves break. 

Horses gather on the beach, 
	      bray and snort. 

Cobalt carries me, 
	      quiere llevarme.

Adriana Rambay Fernández is a writer, poet, and artist currently living in England. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars where she was a recipient of the MFA Fiction Prize. She was also a Writers of Immigration and Diaspora Fellow for Jack Jones Literary Arts. Her writing has appeared in the Hennepin Review, Four Way Review, and elsewhere. Born in New Jersey to Dominican immigrants, her writing explores the nature of absence, loss, and intergenerational wounds.