Liability Forms

by Natalia Sylvester

I’m still unsure how to spell
granddaughter.
Is it with one D, two? Hyphen or none?
 
It is much simpler where his ashes
will be scattered:
nieta. diez. hijita de mijita.
 
I asked if his death certificate
could be written in Spanish
I kept saying birth instead
they kept saying English only
I got stuck in
in-between.
 
Will they know all his names?
 
Will they know that my mother’s father’s
name was once mine
in the land he was born
vanished in the country
where he died?
 
They could not spell it, could not place it
on their mouths            or their maps          or the x
where I signed.
 
They made no room
for it on my fertile, rich, green
card when we arrived.
 
Foreign like grand-daughter
what makes me so grand, anyway?
If my tears did not help him
when the fire came.
 
So much of our history
is dying.

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Natalia Sylvester is the author of two novels for adults, Chasing the Sun (2014) and Everyone Knows You Go Home (2018), which won an International Latino Book Award and the Jesse H. Jones Award for best work of fiction. Running (July 2020), her debut novel for young adults, is a 2020 Junior Library Guild Selection. Born in Lima, Peru, Natalia grew up in Florida and Texas and received a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Miami.