I stand in the yellow light of my cramped kitchen hearing the night crickets outside the window bare foot resting upon ankle slowly stirring the maizena in patterned swirls powdery soft, bleached stripped of all color until it hits the liquid blooming pink I watch patiently as it comes together this ancient, sacred sweetness (made from corn that I did not harvest or mill: no arm muscles here quivering with the work of keeping my family alive) And I am thinking of the spirits of the ones who came before me with summer-cinnamon skin, who survived and whose stories live on in me I couldn’t begin to tell them but the kitchen is where they are alive and breathing I toss comino and chile like a prayer into bubbling pots I spread a paste of masa and water across strips of corn husks as if the pride of my lineage depends on it And on this night, simply: sliced one plastic corner and poured its smooth contents into homogenized 2% milk and snow-white crystals of sugar and called it not necessarily a sacred offering to the dead but a middle-of-the-night snacky still, I hold onto this heritage so tightly - colorful and wounded rich and determined - as if it could flit away like a hummingbird in a small town in Northeast America where my native blood is a qualifier for the 2.2% this daughter's son's daughter of an indigenous man knowing my summer-cinnamon babies will have a golden-edged childhood where they will have heard correct pronunciations and eaten foods our neighbors have never heard of
