I Want To Hear the Tears in Your Voice

Sara Borjas

I want to hear the tears in your voice, which means
I fell in love. A candle who sleeps under the valley’s
patchwork like expensive minerals getting drunk 
off of Chicano sadness. I want to hear the soccer balls
left in the back of the net, the favorite barrette
that exists in photos, the truth. If you have a train
roaring up your throat like a tunnel traveling through
another tunnel, honk the horn. When I’m quiet,
in my room of loneliness, it rains from the earth up
through my dirty socks, into all my travels. I want
to hear the tears in everything you eat, each door
you open like a waking up, running from this world
to the next like a whole trail of ants, never looking up.
For one moment: quit being sad. I heard we are all
made of water. Be proud to be made of water. 

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Sara Borjas is a self-identified Xicanx pocha and a Fresno poet. Her debut collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press, 2019) received a 2020 American Book Award. Sara was featured as one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, CantoMundo, Postgraduate Writers Conference, and Community of Writers. She believes that all Black lives matter and will resist white supremacy until Black liberation is realized. She teaches creative writing at UC Riverside and the UCR Palm Desert Low Residency MFA Program, but stays rooted in Fresno. Find her on IG @saraborhaz and at www.saraborjas.com.