Eres Tu

Shelley Armitage

January 21, 2024

after the popular love song of the same name

You, eres tu

the swimmer struggling up a clay slick beach

You    who cannot swim

thirst in waters you cannot drink

Desparecida on the border   that

liminal space embraced by cactus thorns

you   taste   a stomach so empty

so brined    in necessary love 

And you      the backpack    left by the border wall

hold tight a child’s skirt, wrestle discarded bottles

You you     carry a pentimento of loss

You   earth so proud   that you   crack open

sending angry warnings 

to the builders blocking monarchs

shaking walls tipped in barbed wire

You   the soldier who spit when waved

at     reply to our broken Spanish   puta  

and to you     on the other side of the wall

helicopter a ceaseless tsunami of wind

when you   you   and    you   visited

there      just to see

You       wet cheek   in rivulets running

this rough road to hope and prayers

You     you       eres tu

Would I give you the water from my fountain?

the fire from my home?

the bonfire made for sharing?

Eres tu   eres tu

You carry a child wound tight to your breast

through bonfire, bombs, discountenance, starvation

   desesperada      You

cry out to chatting tv hosts

y quien eres tu

And who are you?

Dr. Shelley Armitage is a professor emerita at the University of Texas at El Paso.  She is author of ten books, the most recent a collection of poems, A Habit of Landscape, its title from a line in her memoir, Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place.