Gravity

I tuck away my spacesuit and visit my grandmother.
I avoid telling her about how I’ve been feeling like an
untethered astronaut drifting into space, and I’m trying to
find my way back to the lights of the space station but
it has suddenly disappeared into the unfolding pitch-blackness.
I let my eyes adjust inside her living room as I glance at
a hardcover book with a picture of Elvis on the cover.
She tells me stories about how she came to this country.
She also tells me about how she felt like she had to shed
parts of her culture and leave them behind in Mexico
in order to be accepted into American society. I don’t ask her
if it was worth it. I think of how she glows differently here and
doesn’t move her feet to music like I’ve seen her do back in Mexico,
stepping out of record stores. It’s like there’s an invisible weight
oppressing her bones, almost like the gravity is somehow
different within the walls of her pocket dimension of a home.
We move our conversation to the kitchen where she often
makes me gorditas. And I’ll watch as she mixes masa to
make a dough. She then pats it into small, round discs
which she puts on the stove. Once those are cooked and
hardened on the outside, she cuts them open so they look
like pockets and fills them with meats or other fillings.
She keeps a toy astronaut with magnetic feet on the hood
of her stove. It’s been there for over forty years, but it isn’t
there this time. Maybe she tucked it away somewhere safe.