By Thomas Maldonado
The Camps of Shedheer I wasn’t going to call you Cadeey the way your mother did in the camps when it was time to make morning malawax – the same way you made it for me that one morning; not too sweet, always oily. Your family tent sunken in from the desert wind the size of swollen golf balls waiting for something to never happen after the war no one ever won. The shiny blue outhouses. The strange new animals flying by. The screeches of white chalk on green walls. Must’ve been awkward to see our smiles lost in a place where old men aren’t allowed to feel the way young women do when they think we’re younger than we really are. That Mexican restaurant in the summer, all eyes on us. The drives to Faribault and hamburgers at Dairy Queen. The late night calls. Singing Nagmay to me be cause you were bored or wanted to see me smile. I remember the night you left for Xamar wondering if I’d ever see us again making snowmen in the pale snowstorms of Kato’s backwoods laughing about nothing over the chocolatey mole, Spanish rice, and pinto beans I cooked for two. But I got it all wrong. No one’s supposed to laugh. I see the way you look at each other. There’s a cold breeze. The stare itself feels colder. Drops of sweat, one-by-one. Fall. I think about words and how they’re really just hollow sounds made to make us feel their worth. Kind of the way you made me feel when you stopped calling.
Thomas Maldonado is a Mexican American creative nonfiction writer and poet who teaches English for Academic Purposes, Intensive English and English Composition at his local community college and university in South Central Minnesota. He uniquely blends creative writing in his TESL courses while mentoring his multilingual students as they journal their writing experiences via poetry and creative nonfiction. When he’s not taking long walks through Kampala, he’s making snow angels in Mankato.