Sec-he

on ode to those here before me

When you think of my hometown, you might think of

old celebrities, mid-century style houses with crystal pools,

where you can lounge and bake out in the sun all day while 

gazing at the purple mountains that seem right upon you,

until your skin browns like the pastries you might find in a

little shop downtown. You might think of music festivals 

on hot spring days where the sky is painted at twilight.

But when I look up at those mountains, 

I think my home is a mystery.

Where are the people who called the Coachella Valley home

before we had even taken our first breaths?

Throughout the Sec-he, they left pieces of themselves,

whispers of a culture thrumming with life.

Their old celebrities were Mukat and Temawayet,

and their homes, kish made of dried brush and palm

and instead of pools, oases shaded by palms on hot days.

They didn’t see a purpose in frying under the sun,

but in preparing for the Nukil to remember loved ones.

They used to see the same beauty, in the watercolor-sunsets, 

ethereal rays of sunlight breaking over the mountain peaks.

Their memory lives in “artifacts” held hostage in museums 

and in infertile plots of land where their language dies.