When My Partner Asks Me about Immigration Reform

When we talk about deportation

what we're really talking about are miles

put between blood. We talk about takeoffs

and landings, of how you’ve grown,

of how you’ve aged, of how death

becomes a phone call at 3 a.m., a sea

between us, the rustle of my sheets.

I say it's like the self is doubled

except there is no meeting

point for either of those selves.

You will always be aimless,

you will always feel as if you

left the stove on in your apartment.

I was once instructed to create

my own language, and I said

I would create the language

of Fuck you, Don't Toy With Me.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

---

Eva Maria Saavedra is a Peruvian-American poet, educator, and mother born and raised in New Jersey where she currently resides with her infant son, Mateo Rafael. She writes about being First-generation American, a Latinx woman, and a single mother. She received a BA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA in writing and translation from Columbia's School of the Arts. Her chapbook, Thirst, was selected by Marilyn Hacker for the Poetry Society of America's 2014 New York Chapbook Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in Callaloo, The Acentos Review, and Apogee Journal. She’s working on her first full-length manuscript of poems.