You Embarrass Me

A Poem for my mom.

You Embarrass Me

Mom, I don’t go out with you anymore,
at least, not how I used to, when I was younger,
when we used to go to Flushing Meadows Park
and sell empanadas to old Hispanic men
in cargo shorts and faded t-shirts
while they sat and reminisced,

I hardly speak about you
when my friends and I share
stories of family and long gone pasts,
I don’t talk about how we used to stay
at home on Sundays, making sopa Paraguaya
for homesick Paraguayans, or about
how I used to be bored out of my mind
at the Laundromat down the street, while you did
me and my sister's laundry every week,
to make sure we had clean clothes for school,

I don’t bring girls over to have dinner with you, and
we both know it’s not because you can’t cook,
I don’t tell them too many details about you, they say
a woman could tell a lot about a man through
his relationship with his mother and
through their past so I keep both in the dark,
lingering passed shadows in my room at night, and
behind the dark brown shades of my eyes,

I don’t carry pictures of you in my wallet,
so as to not remind myself of the home
I’m going to every night,
so I don’t see your eyes,
when I pull out a 20, 10, or 5 bill, to
pay for another cheap drink and
distracting thrill;
to forget who we are and
what we’ve been through,

The truth is, you embarrass me

You’re a lonely teacher,
turned housekeeper,
turned cook,
turned single mother with two kids,
living alone, in debt, and yet
you don’t look back,

You embarrass me because you keep
ungrateful children on your arm and back,
one high school dropout teenage mother
whose baby, like her mother, has no father,
and another one, a son, with even more
wasted potential than you,
he who, quit music, quit sports, quit all the jobs
that fell on his lap, quit working hard, trying and
only stays in school because he doesn’t
want to end up like you,

You embarrass me because you drive
a beat down blue 94 Jeep Cherokee, with
reflective stripes on the back bumper,
red and white like the universal sign
for barbershop, and when I try to take
girls out on dates I have to wait,
till the night time so the car could shine, and if
I play my cards the right way, I have to mess around
with girls in the back seat on lonely Queens back streets
because my room, at home, is right next to yours,

You embarrass me because two weeks of
missed work would throw you into bankruptcy,
I’ve felt this instability constantly throughout my life,
when I close my eyes tight enough, I can feel
this boat we’re on being pulled with the rip tide
while the anchor chain floats loosely by our side,

You embarrass me because you did it alone,
every night when I come home, I see you
tucked in your bed alone, watching the food network
on t.v. and you look at smile at me,
make me dinner and talk to me about how a new 711
just opened on Northern Boulevard or about how
the weathers been crazy lately, the little things,
even though we both know I’m out growing you,

You embarrass me because you’re alone,
you do it all alone,

You embarrass me because
Ill never be as strong as you.