Richard Blanco

 

El Florida Room

Not a study or a den, but El Florida 
as my mother called it, a pretty name 
for the room with the prettiest view 
of the lipstick-red hibiscus puckered up 
against the windows, the tepid breeze 
laden with the brown-sugar scent 
of loquats drifting in from the yard. 

Not a sunroom, but where the sun 
both rose and set, all day the shadows 
of banana trees fan-dancing across 
the floor, and if it rained, it rained 
the loudest, like marbles plunking 
across the roof under constant threat 
of coconuts ready to fall from the sky. 

Not a sitting room, but El Florida, where 
I sat alone for hours with butterflies 
frozen on the polyester curtains 
and faces of Lladró figurines: sad angels, 
clowns, and princesses with eyes glazed 
blue and gray, gazing from behind 
the glass doors of the wall cabinet. 

Not a tv room, but where I watched 
Creature Feature as a boy, clinging 
to my brother, safe from vampires 
in the same sofa where I fell in love 
with Clint Eastwood and my Abuelo 
watching westerns, or pitying women 
crying in telenovelas with my Abuela. 

Not a family room, but the room where 
my father twirled his hair while listening 
to eight-tracks of Elvis, read Nietzsche 
and Kant a few months before he died, 
where my mother learned to dance alone 
as she swept, and I learned salsa pressed 
against my Tía Julia's enormous breasts. 

At the edge of the city, in the company 
of crickets, beside the empty clothesline, 
telephone wires, and the moon, tonight 
my life is an old friend sitting with me 
not in the living room, but in the light 
of El Florida, as quiet and necessary 
as any star shining above it.