Monica Rico | Soy de la Luna, I am from the Moon (Volveré a la Luna, I Will Return to the Moon) | Poets Resist

Author photo by Nicole Rico

Monica Rico grew up in Saginaw, Michigan alongside General Motors and the legend of Theodore Roethke. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and the author of Twisted Mouth of the Tulip (Red Paint Hill Publishing, 2017). Her poems have appeared in SiDEKiCK Lit, Dunes Review, Moonchild Magazine, The Ilanot Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Luna Luna, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse.

Monica Rico's Website

Also by Monica Rico: Twisted Mouth of the Tulip Self Study as a Snow Globe Three Poems

Poets Resist
Edited by Jonathan May
June 27, 2018

Monica Rico

Soy de la Luna, I am from the Moon (Volveré a la Luna, I Will Return to the Moon)

for the two thousand three hundred immigrant children separated from their parents I can count to two thousand and three hundred in two hundred and thirty minutes. Let me start with mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, petunia. My heart beats two thousand and four hundred times in a half an hour. Mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, petunia. I’ll lose two thousand and three hundred hairs in twenty-three days. Mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, petunia. I’m trespassing once I stop moving. Mi’jo, mi’ja mi vida, petunia. The breath from my lungs is ninety percent moon dust. I can hardly breathe. Mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, petunia. My heart broke the day my mother told me, I would out live her. I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. Mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, petunia. I dream of a bridge covered in lions’ heads, their tongues a full moon. Mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, petunia. My blood has turned to wine. I forget to breathe forget to look for the moon. Mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, petunia. The lilacs’ bloom doesn’t last. I see a girl turn into a fawn the moon blocked by street lights. How awful to hide those white splotches, bits of moon dust against the grass too wet wept with tears. Mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, petunia. I carry the dark of her eyes, the recommended amount of sodium is two thousand and three hundred milligrams every day. Salt is from the sea. The sea’s tide is controlled by the moon which says, mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, petunia. The artic tern will bring back all two thousand and three hundred to the moon. Each one flies that distance three times during their life. I trust them to carry each mi’jo, mi’ja, mi vida, and petunia home.

The title of my poem “I am from the moon” is a direct quote from a five year old girl from this article. Translations of Spanish: mi’jo (my son), mi’ja (my daughter), mi vida (my life).