Supermoon

My wife was still doing her hair and makeup before our meal at Cocina Abierta—
a seven-course tasting circled in red weeks ago—a promise we weren’t sure we’d keep.

So my brother and I filled the hour wandering the narrow streets of the city rooted in my mother’s heart and past, San Juan—where I’ve paused—for now—before our cruise (four days of cartoon joy, a detour from grief).
 
On this last full day before our boarding nothing in the light said “stay”,
just the heat starting to shade into the cooler night.

This stopover was meant to bring me closer to my Boricua self,
but it was starting to feel staged—someone else’s reunion, not mine

All of my relatives with island roots had passed and 
my baby Spanglish was faltering in actual conversations.

I was feeling lost even though I knew the words to ask 
for directions.  My mind just couldn't translate it all fast enough.

 —And Condado was losing its charm in its expanding 
urban sprawl, faux touristy glitz, and million dollar condos—

Slightly lost, we wandered into an older section of Condado,
where homes still clung to their original colonial design—

mini fortresses made of masonry- mostly stone and brick—
an ancient place with no street lights, where the stars can still be seen.
 
The only concession to modernity— the seven foot concrete walls
all around, and the smoothly working, remotely operated iron gates.

In the darkness I heard a voice,
“Pare, por favor!”—it said warmly, fraying at the edges.
Stop, please!”—a colder echo, splintering in the code switching.

I turned and saw the illuminated shadow of an old woman.
wearing a maroon coat— in one hand— a green camping lantern—
in the other —a quart bowl of homemade cinnamon Mantecado.
 
She was short and squat, with the same density as my grandmother.
Her face held traces of the beauty queen my mother once was.

And her scent was my mother’s perfect match—
avocado, mango and talc— the smell of the kitchen—
just not the ashes, the medicines and the stink of her death.  

“Retrocede y busca,” she said with a heavy accent,
then slid effortlessly into unaccented English just as 
my mother did with her siblings—“Backup and look up.”

I did as I was told— and in the several steps back,
away from the palm trees and awnings— there was the moon 
bigger than I've ever seen — suspended over sea. and sky.

“Supermoon.  Superluna,” she said, putting the lantern down— 
 raising the Mantecado bowl with her two hands to the sky.   

“It's wonderful. Es marvilloso, “ I said to her—
as we stayed fixated in this uncut eternity,
until my brother’s watch buzzed with our dining reminder.

Goodbye, Vaya con dios,”I told her.
“Recuerda esta noche siempre,” she whispered back.

She gifted me her Mantecado, and I gifted her a hug. 
She receded back to her humble house—logs, poles, a thatch roof.
the last echo of Taino huts from a vanquished Puerto Rico.

I gave my hungry brother the Mantecado, cleaned the vessel 
of cream before meeting my wife at the hotel entrance,
told her I had bought the bowl at some souvenir shop.

Cocina Abierta was just two blocks from the hotel   
and my wife’s face was beaming with the 
promise of slowly savoring new tastes.
  
She was radiant and in her joy almost as wonderful 
as the Supermoon—La Superluna.  “Recuerda esta noche siempre,”
 I said inside, first to myself— and then to her.