In the 70s Pa wore bell-bottom jeans and styled

his afro like the Americanos he saw on T.V., back

when chest hair poofed from underneath leather

vests and sex wandered from salty eyes.

Pa never tells me about those days, about the drugs

and sleeping on beaches, but I can see it in the yellowed

photograph, him smiling like I’ve never seen before

with Wicho, Kiko, Ramon, Jackie.

His shirt is off and he is coolly flexing

a bicep while reaching back to keep his hair in its

immaculate form, concerned about

his good looks like I’ve never seen him before.

This is what I know of his past, how I learned

about the gringa with dirty blonde curls, blue eyes, thick

figure, standing with her arms around Pa’s shoulders

like I have never seen before. She is a skyscraper

among mud and jungle, wearing her independence

like a necklace for all to palm. I’ve never known her,

cannot make up her scents, am foreign to her flesh

pink lips, probably tasting of something else.

I only know her name is Connie,

and that she was Pa’s first wife. Over the decades

she has become the passport I carry in my luggage,

her legs an open road that veered north.