Hilcias in the Fields

 from fragments of Hilcias’ and Taki’s notebook

When he was two, his mamí talked with him in the language of poetry as she walked him tied to her back down the long rows of peach trees in the South Carolina sun. 

She reached up into a tree, took a peach in her calloused hand, and rubbed it’s fuzzy skin against his soft cheek. 

She whispered,

Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres

porque de las praderas planetarias

otra estrella no tengo. Tú repites

la multiplicación del universo.

I love the handful of earth you are.

Because of it's meadows, vast as a planet,

I have no other star. You are my replica

of the multiplying universe.

She did.

She waited for him to talk back to her with toddling talk, to say to her with wondering words “mamí”and “amo” and “tú,” but he didn't say a thing. 

He only looked at her with wide, unblinking, brown eyes, the color of the deep parts of the earth, and jutted out his little, bottom lip as if to say, "There’s much I could say, but I can't.”

Now, people ask him, "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" or "How are you?" and he answers them with whistles instead of with words. 

They ask his abuelo, "What's wrong with him?" and the old man simply sighs the sigh of one who carries heavy loads on his back and in his heart.

“Dios sabe,” he answers. “God knows."