Thoughts, Visions, and other Items Created by Susannah Thomas Castro 

Why don’t you love your body?

I don’t know. 

The heat in the house was oppressive 

and I kept running the hose on the porch

to try and cool it down. 

Overwhelmed, soaked and humid, I want to take off all my clothes.  

But there is a man standing in a tall field of grass watching me.  

I don’t want him to see my naked body. 

It isn’t beautiful enough. 

Never beautiful enough. 

The Asian fashion designer befriended me believing I was special and stylish - confusing and mesmerizing. 

A magus. 

An imposter. 

All smoke and mirrors just like old Hollywood. 

“Who designed your bracelets?” she asked. 

I didn’t tell her they are milagros abandoned by migrants at the border. 

Desperate prayers that must be left at the feet of the Santo for safety in crossing the brutal and unforgiving gauntlet of this desert. 

This fire that burns everything else away.  

This great equalizer. 

What remains, at best, is a purified and emptied self. 

Removed of any previous certainty. 

Or perhaps just a skeleton disrupted by coyotes in the night and left for the lost seeker to stumble upon while searching for meaning and for home.  

Finding safety at a ranch windmill and drinking from ponds filled by summer rains. 

Trading this trial on the desert for just a little more time. For just a few more years of heartbreak, joy, and love. 

This is not the realm of the hungry ghost. 

“You can never be too rich or too thin” she said.

The hummingbirds were fighting and one flew into the window. 

I picked her up to revive her but her beak was broken. 

I held her to my heart until she died. 

When my son was little a hummingbird flew into the window. 

He held her until she revived and flew away. Hands holding a hummingbird.