Building a Home Away From Home

Poetry by Valy Steverlynck

​For my first child
1.
In this land that I chose for its open seas I landlock myself 
and my newborn. The windows I latch. I layer brick rows. 

Within tight-sealed windows my childhood I transplant: 
my blankie; my first doll; Primeras Palabras; canciones de 

cuna; my mother’s voice, cooing. “¿Que quieres mi niña?” 
I ask my own child. I want us to dream in my mother tongue.

2.
Left outside, my husband’s first words– stacked like 
cord wood on the wet deck. Inside our tight fortress

he moves like a shadow. His memories knock, wait 
on the porch. I race past him, bolt the front door.  

3.
Months, years pass while I sing to my baby “Arroró, mi niña, 
arroró, mi sol” I dream her a daisy among blooming flowers–

poppies, blue bonnets, lilies, wild roses– a rainbow of colors, 
tea parties and laughter. “Tell me about her” I ask her teacher. 

I lean in on elbows, eager to bask. “They can’t understand her– 
she can’t understand them– all day she plays on her own.” 

For my last child
1.
A gurgling I don’t recognize, these sounds, splattering 
over the threshold– “bottle,” “baby,” “milk,” “more”

how do you say te amo in English? “Drink, baby drink” 
I unlatch the shutters, the door I fling open to let the words

in, my baby’s hands splashing in puddles of vowels, I want 
her small feet to take root. Whisper of white pine, rustle 

of maple, lullaby, silver, for my blended child– can you hear 
scarlet, can you hear fire, in my heart the crimson moan of the ceibo. 

Primeras Palabras: My First Words
canciones de cuna: Lullabies
¿Que quieres mi niña?: What would you like, my baby girl?
Arroró, mi niña, arroró, mi sol: Words to a Spanish lullaby
te amo: I love you
ceibo: National flower of Argentina

Valy Steverlynck

Valy Steverlynck is an Argentine-American artist, emerging poet, mother and oyster farmer based in Maine. Valy is a Pushcart nominee. Her poems are forthcoming in Poets Reading the News, Literary Mama, Panoplyzine, Gyroscope, West Trestle Review, Poetry Superhighway, Mockingbird, Action Spectacle, Madswirl, Eunoia, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Main Street Rag, Sheila-Na-Gig, SWWIM and Cider Press Review. Her visual work has been shown at multiple galleries and art museums including the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, DeCordova Museum, Fuller Museum of Art and Centro Recoleta, Argentina. Valy can be reached at [email protected].