i initially think we fight out of hunger,
because she looked for the pills and i put them in the oven.
i had to take care of my mother at 14
when she cried like alice.
we reached el yunque’s peak
to see only water and wind.

i have a list of reasons in my bag.
reasons to hate yourself and all others by extension:

             first reason:
my father has cancer.
             the same father who would vote for trump,
                           if he wasn’t puertorriqueño,
    but he is puertorriqueño, like his cancer,                   
                           his very puertorriqueño cancer.

             fifth reason:

here my friends hoard hormones,
there my friends spent years stealing from the state that stole their
resources, which don’t exist.

             twelfth reason:

i feel rage towards my white friends,
            who don’t care about the imposition of the control board,
                          for whom this is the first dictatorship.
            i’m crying at them the rage i feel toward my gf,
                          but i let it go because i’m worried about their sweetness.

miscellaneous reasons:

i can’t breathe in basements.
the codified letters are to be read with a metronome.
this chest//rage//discordant ink.
fascism isn’t new.
             fascism lived in condado.
                          fascism pushed my face into the sand
                                       when it reached our beaches.
who cares is fascism’s motto.
who cares if the minimum wage goes down in puerto rico.
who cares if all your people die slowly.
fascism is so not-new, that i don’t know the difference
between the rage i feel and the rage i felt.

i fight with my gf because she opened the window and it was cold.
           i fight with her because it’s cold and i’m not in puerto rico.
i fight with her because the lamplight is too strong.
           i fight with her because it isn’t the río piedras sun.

the fascists want us dead.
neither one of us says it because it’s obvious,
like saying capitalism is the root of all our problems.
it’s so obvious we forget,
or we want to forget because destroying it feels impossible,
when barely living is too much.

i fight with my girlfriend because she forgets
            my boricua friend’s name
and because i’m tired.
i self-medicate with poems.
i do rebirth rituals.
i fight with her because i love too much for these times,
because love is an elemental resource,
but never as elemental as self-defense,
which is the most love of all the loves.

we fight because it’s 12,
because a day doesn’t pass where we aren’t afraid,
because all the cross streets read enemy,
because any white man could be armed,
because i am boricua and they record my conversations,
because she is jewish and carries numbers in her blood,
because the fascists are organized
             to kill us.
these are obvious things, things we know,
things that reverberate.

many theorists say trauma is time out of joint.
the audiotrack speed
doesn’t match the images.
my mouth also doesn’t say what my face wants;
the words come out too fast and hurtful, 
as if it didn’t recognize her.
i think trauma is more like
            they put the audiotrack on another series,
                        as if i spoke for her
and she spoke for the fascists.
it’s so obvious those aren’t her words
it’s so obvious, like saying
capitalism is the root of all our problems
or we can’t fight if we are dead.