Fastened

Amá told me silence

was safer than reply.

She said it at the table

while my father folded his napkin

and didn’t look at me.

Cicadas scream.

No one pauses.

Their chorus drives 

through adobe walls,

wire screens,

plates still warm with grease.

Every season they return

from under the dirt—

skins split, hanging

on fence posts and garden gates.

Knuckles stiff from fieldwork.

Throat learning

to close.

It rasped through.

Wings scraping bark.

Grit at the back of my tongue.

Listen long enough

and it thins

to a wire in the ear.

The husks stay 

fastened to the wood.