I sat in the passenger seat with my
socked feet resting on the windshield
and my eyes counting the exit numbers.

A dry, raspy voice, reading the unabridged
audio recording of The Beautiful and Damned,
drifted into my ears
no matter how hard I tried to block it out.

A shrill ring
interrupted the voice
and filled up the station wagon—
Dalia was on the line.

Mom was prepared
to tell her the alarm code is 9851
Oscar gets two cups of kibble
and the new laundry detergent
is in the plastic bag under the sink,

but this was a call that should not have
been answered on speaker phone.

Dalia was sobbing.
I imagined the droplets
falling on her phone.
I wanted to reach out and wipe them
but we were still 22 exits away.

Violent and angry and sad,
we drowned in her words.

La estrella de mi familia está muerta
My brother is dead
my youngest brother of twelve children
my only brother with a college education
that took three years and eleven siblings
to afford

La estrella de mi familia está muerta
My brother is dead
my one brother with a high-paying job
who stops the wicked men behind drug cartels
and sends money in brown paper envelopes
to our whole family

La estrella de mi familia está muerta
My brother— stabbed by six men with twelve
knives on the dusty Mexican streets
drunken dirty men who sought
vengeance by stealing
a life

She hung up, and the hollow reading
of Fitzgerald’s weepy words
resumed seconds later:

Life is so damned hard, so damned hard…
It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally
it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more.