Pilgrim/Peregrino

Cristina Correa

Pilgrim/Peregrino

After Muriel Hasbun’s Peregrino/Pilgrim, from the series Santos y sombras/Saints and Shadows, 1997, gelatin silver print

A dead man I used to love visits me in a dream and asks me to bathe and clothe him for the funeral. He opens his lips and wet petals gleam like a crowded smile. He blinks and scrolls fall. He hands me his powder blue tie. He is teaching me how to keep you. My waking room feels suddenly hushed, like spirits who guard the sleeping are still there, quietly vanishing. Wake in any gray bedroom and there they were, are. Like blades of curt light, cooling in the chipped paint and dusty holes that nails were pulled from— the memory of another place. Tell us a story, will you, soft line? Tell me what it’s like to be buried by the living.

Cristina Correa’s writing has been published or is forthcoming   in TriQuarterly, Vinyl Poetry, and MAKE: A Literary Magazine. She is a ‘Midwestern Voices & Visions’ awardee and has received fellowships from VONA/Voices, Indiana University Writers’ Conference, and Ragdale Foundation. Her poem “Reflection from a Bridge” was selected by Tracy K. Smith for the Best New Poets anthology in 2015. She is an MFA candidate at Cornell University.