María-Luisa Ornelas-June, born and raised in Laredo, Texas, earned a law degree but found greater passion outside of traditional legal practice. After a brief stint in law, she accompanied her spouse on international postings to the Netherlands, Singapore, and India. In Singapore, she discovered her love for teaching while instructing first-year law students in legal research and writing at the National University of Singapore. Now residing in Houston, Texas, María-Luisa is a Tejana folklorist, blending historical and cultural insights into her work. She is currently producing a podcast episode for Texas Folklife on the history of flamenco in Houston. Her three enclosed poems explore themes of motherhood and the transition to life after children leave home.

My Attic

Years ago, I packed boxes of memories
Embroidered blouses and dresses from the mercado

Castanets

Grandma’s lunches that started with the Angelus

The smell of fig trees and orange blossoms

Public awards events that always included dancing to a live band

and Mexican candies bartered on the playground

Without much emotion, I stored them.

Assimilation beckoned on the horizon. With it, financial security but the cost was never mentioned. I was told it was clean and peaceful. So unlike the messy and chaotic border that I considered home.

My accent softened

My Rs no longer rolled

Candles no longer flickered on the stove, through the night, sending a constant prayer for protection in a house with bars on the windows and derelict car in the yard.

Nonetheless, my guard went up

My boxes followed me, unopened. To a house, in a subdivision, where colorful wrought-iron bars on the windows are not allowed.

Where only organs, and not guitars, lifted my prayers to heaven.

Where cups of coffee were served by the book, an appointment book, in a shop, without the smell of natural gas

And the doorbell no longer chimed in an unexpected friend

Or dance celebrated an achievement

I think I mistook clean and peaceful for sterile.

The Crone

My children leave a mess in whatever room they’re in

Perhaps it was a solidified mass of chocolate milk
that the surgeon cleaned out the first room they ever occupied

I forgot to tell my husband that I was off to get tutored as they wheeled me away
perhaps it was the fear a mess would be the least of my worries

One less pad to put on, one less mess to clean

The monthly spring of my body had a scent that exists only in the past
and beckoned my children’s spirit to grow

a celebration of mitosis that divided until they separated from me
and walked into rooms of their own
to dirty
and maybe clean

My heart and skin are in mourning, grieving, not glowing
because we are no longer life giving

But the plants that used to shrivel in the presence of my fertility
understand that I’m ready to take the stage and bloom in abundance

In rooms no longer filled with my children’s messes

Sisyphus and the Hairball

I pretend the hairball isn’t in the corner,
Suddenly it parades down the hall.

I ignore the mold growing along the grout,
until it expands to several bands of color.

The pile of dirty laundry grows and grows,
spilling over and unable to grow more.

Sisyphus pushed and pushed the rock up the mountain,
until she could push no more.

A stack of books demands my attention.
A friend graces my day with her call.

I pick up some cleaning solutions and rags,
whisking up the hairballs,
beating the multi-colored mold back.

The clothes are washed and folded,
I’ve pushed the rock to the top of the mountain.

I look at the stack of books and pick one up,
ignoring, for now, the hairball lurking in the corner.