words someone else wanted to remember #1: Juan Rulfo

Someone before me took a highlighter to this copy of Juan Rulfo's "Macario." Here are the words that stranger thought to highlight in the order of his or her doing shaped like a poem.

Godmother, frogs are green all over

except on the belly. Toads are black.

Godmother’s eyes are also black –

Felipa has green eyes like a cat’s

eyes, I love Felipa more than God-

mother, alone in the kitchen cooking

food for the three of us. I’m always

hungry

and I never get filled up – never.

They say in the street

that I’m crazy

because I never stop being hungry.

Go to church: she sets me down

next to her and ties my hands

with the fringe of her shawl. I do

crazy things – found me hanging

somebody, a lady, just to be doing it.

I don’t remember.

People who invite me to eat

get close, throw rocks at me until

I run away.

Felipe’s milk is as sweet as hibiscus

flowers, it’s been a long time

since she has let me nurse the breasts.

She would fix the breasts so that I could

suck the sweet, hot milk; tickle me all over.

I wasn’t afraid of being damned to hell

if I died there alone some night,

that fear of mine that I have of dying.

I’m full of devils inside.

Bar the door so my sins won’t find me out.

Felipa says the crickets always

make noise

so you can’t hear the cries of souls

suffering. Maybe there are more

crickets than cockroaches

among the folds of the sacks

where I sleep.