What It Was Like

If they ask what it was like, say it was like the sea

rolling barrels of itself at you in the shadowless light of the shore,

say it was like a spider, black as night, large as a campesino’s hand,

a deepness that could balance a small world of dirt as easily as a gift

of gleaming red tomatoes held out to you eight at a time.

If they ask you how it felt, say solitary,

at first the ease of sleeping alone, warm without even a sheet,

then the nonchalance of a dirt road leading down the hill, its dust

raised and re-raised in plumes as each guest departed,

and later, say it was like the blind cat that came out of nowhere

to lie on your tile floor, lifting its face to stare with white marble eyes.

If they ask what you heard, tell them the single note of the watchman,

who coughed his one syllable when you went to bed,

and at the end of every dream when you woke with a simple plea—

stay, go—again, the cough of the watchman.

If they ask about thirst, tell them no one could carry water as far

as it had to go, so that when it was time to rest,

people went to the spigot at the edge of the train tracks

and cupped their hands under the water, lowering their faces to drink.

Tell them a man could stand at noon in the park wearing nothing but underwear

and beg for hours with his cup empty.

Tell them you could sit quietly while phrases you didn't know you knew 

rose up in the language there and on an undisturbed lake in your mind 

you could back float—that weightless prayer that prays 

Let me die with my toes pointing up at the sun.

When they ask what people will eventually get around to asking, 

How was the food? Tell them batata, mamón, guanábana, maní,

indigenous crops exchanging places with hunger,

giving up to the dark store window whose inventory is one hand

of bananas sold one banana at a time, giving up to little pyramids of limes

by the side of the road and the kids who tend them, dreaming

of a few coins tossed down in the dirt.

Copyright Credit: "What It Was Like" from One Hidden Stuff by Barbara Ras, copyright © 2006 by Barbara Ras. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: One Hidden Stuff (Penguin, 2006)