If There is an After, There was Before

Nights when a hurricane bore down,
          we pulled a mattress into the living room.
We stuck candles into the tops of empty
          Coke bottles, caught the wax drippings
and formed them into balls. We were still
         all together then. No one had yet passed 
away, no one had left or shaken the dust 
         off their feet at the threshold. We were 
happy, or I think we were happy, knowing nothing
        about the world except that we believed 
one day, as long as we were good, we'd make
        our fortunes and live out our days eating
apples and grapes or smoking cirarettes 
         like thin people did in the movies. Waiting 
for the endless rain to stop, we ate tinned 
         mackerel poured on mounds of hot white 
rice, then lay back on the pillows as the aunts 
         clicked their way down one wooden 
rosary bead to the next, intoning prayers. None 
         of us had yet left for another country, nor 
written letters about our loneliness on thin 
         blue air mail paper that would arrive with less 
and less frequency. Our houses, which were more 
         than a hundred years old, shivered with every 
blow of wind. Our mothers searched our heads
         for lice before tightly braiding our hair— so
tightly it brought tears to our eyes, but the kind that
         did not yet feel like we'd lost a whole world.