i was eating tex-mex sushi fusion with my girlfriend before a concert. 

i was taking a break from my vigilante worry for one night.

i think i was laughing when i felt my phone buzz.

and then holding my breath when i saw who was calling. 

i was standing outside alone on the asphalt when he said your mother

took all her pills, locked the door.

i was task managing, asking calmly: what kind. how many. the ambulance,

how far. is she speaking. 

i was whispering in my girlfriend’s ear:

she finally did it. 

smoking pot in the car before the music started, i was explaining 

my relief: what i most feared would happen had happened, and therefore i was suddenly free,

smiling, announcing i’m off duty!, knowing she would survive the night,

constantly supervised, someone else’s responsibility. 

so then i was dancing as if it would nourish her, dancing because i couldn’t get to her

til morning, dancing because i thought she’d want me to, 

i was sending her the memory of movement, of enjoying it. 

i was in another city, in a fancy hotel room.

i was disappointed my girlfriend and i didn’t have sex that night, 

our first trip together.

i was clenching my jaw, awakened by the spasm of an old injury 

from which i would never recover.  i was just turning over, reaching 

for what little i knew. 

i was thinking i would never do to anyone what my mother did to me.

i was thinking i would never be like her.

i was thinking how much she loved to dance.

Published November 15th, 2020

mal profeta is a writer, editor, and public health advocate. they are completing an mfa in poetry at nyu and currently work in a clinical/translational science research center that focuses on addressing health disparities in appalachia. recipient of the fugue poetry prize, their poems can be found in the aesthetica international creative writing anthology, the offing, prism international, sand, zyzzyva, and elsewhere.

Nora Maité Nieves is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator, who was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Nieves received a BFA in Painting from Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While regularly exhibiting her work in Puerto Rico, Chicago, and New York, Nieves has also shown in Florida, Wisconsin, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain, and Sweden. She has been an artist in residence at The Cooper Union School and Unisex Salon in New York, High Concept Laboratories in Chicago, and ÁREA: Lugar de Proyectos in Caguas, Puerto Rico. Nieves was interviewed by BOMB Magazine for her 2019 exhibit, Full Moon in the Sun Room, at Fresh Window Gallery in Brooklyn. More of Nieves’ work can be viewed on her website.