Elegy

By Bianca Pérez

“The hearing is the last
to go,” they tell us
but we have stopped listening
to anything other than his body
breathing. Next to me, I hear
my mother promising to love beyond
this world and my face is wet and hot
and hurting. I hear my father’s laugh
in the echoes of some memory:
mi reina, mi güera. His ghost
in my ears. We have begun to play
his favorite songs, the ones he always sang
the wrong words to but no one cares
about that now. The last thing we hope he hears

is the ocean & the sound of his boat’s hull 

hitting a small wave and the seagulls—
god, I hope he hears the seagulls.

Published in Gemini Gospel and Essential Voices