Persigno by Edward Moreta Jr.

My family makes the sign of the holy cross at everything ––

jokes, bills, bad news, thunderstorms, sad commercials.

My grandmother taught me how to pray, taking my hands

in hers and gliding them in front of my chest, ending with knuckles

to our lips. I would repeat the words to myself before I knew

what they meant, en el nombre del padre, del hijo, y del espíritu santo.

My grandmother insists I make the cross before I leave the house,

but I only remember when I remember.

In America, my family has become less

and less religious, each generation more behind

than the last. I was baptized, never did communion,

spent Sundays at my Aunts instead of Sunday school

because my mother worked seven days a week.

In English, my prayers deflate like balloons in mid air,

but in Spanish, my prayers bring me to a room.

The truth is I only know how to pray in Spanish,

words splintering from my mouth in secondhand ruin,

collapsing into a pile of slowly forking flames.

I’m never here until I’m here, but when I arrive to the room,

I always arrive searching. In these words of prayer,

light and dust rising around me, I come out with myself.

Edward Moreta Jr. (he/him/his) is an Afro-Latino student currently on gap year from Kenyon College and a Milton Academy alum. He is from Dorchester (a neighborhood in the city of Boston) and has been published in the Tahoma Literary Review / The Offing / The Void / The Adroit Journal (where he was a finalist for the Adroit Prize in Poetry 2020) / and Sixth Finch. Instagram: e_moreta Twitter: emoretajr