Marie B Gauthiez, Remember the Way, 2025
Mixed media on paper
Courtesy of the artist
Artist Website, Instagram
All my mothers told me to pray to a quenching God,
to rinse my four-eyed vision clear with rivers—
they said even brown currents murky with dead fish
stench & rivers flowing south ran heavenward.
Tita said this & stepped on a dead cat once, four feet deep
in our río—felt its black fur sop up God’s salt.
Still, she returned me & my cousins to its banks, faithful
we’d hydrate ourselves, feet sipping streams.
I’d cling to Primo Erik’s slippery fins as he swam fast,
shark among tadpoles—I his gill-less parasite
scared of grazing a lifeless blur of fur on the seafloor,
guileless in guessing it’d infect me with death.
I’ve lived afraid of dead things, afraid of living things
that may wish me dead, things convulsing
between rivers & skeletal riverbeds—I’ve lived too
afraid of breathless things & things unsaid.
My mothers died alive, exhaling postmortem advice.
Tita waited to reveal how rivers speak until
I died alive, blurred on river’s precipice—drowned
of mothers, drained of breathless moments—
my mothers summoned pungent tides of life
to lap at my toes, rivers with unsaid song sipping my salt
& hydrating me. Here, I collect my deaths:
stones smoothing into symphony under soothed water.
I’ve heard a river crescendo in its evening
rush—I’ve quarreled with its quiet among early birds
& once I learned my whisper’s scope,
I stenciled myself into its gentle composition.
I laze riverside, murky brown face glazed clear
upon its mirror. Tita composes its hush. I dip my hand in
to feel each ripple’s breadth, each breath of liquid
prayer: I send my bloated silence floating heavenward—