Not one more refugee death

A river killed a man I loved, And I love that river still —María Meléndez 1. Thousands of fish killed after Pemex spill in el Río Salado and everyone runs out to buy more bottled water. Here, our river kills more crossers than the sun, than the singular heat of Arizona, than the ranchlands near the Falfurrias checkpoint. It's hard to imagine an endangered river with that much water, especially in summer and with the Falcon Reservoir in drought, though it only takes inches to drown. Sometimes, further west, there's too little river to paddle in Boquillas Canyon where there are no steel-column walls except the limestone canyon's drop and where a puma might push-wade across, or in El Paso, where double-fenced muros sparkle and blind with bullfight ring lights, the ring the concrete river mold, and above a Juárez mountain urges La Biblia es La Verdad—Leela. 2. Today at the vigil, the native singer said we are all connected by water, la sangre de vida. Today, our vigil signs proclaimed McAllen is not Murrieta. #iamborderless. Derechos Inmigrantes=Derechos Humanos. Bienvenidos niños. We stand with refugee children. We are all human. Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. And the songs we sang the copal that burned and the rose petals spread en los cuatro puntos were for the children and women and men. Songs for the Guatemalan boy with an Elvis belt buckle and Angry Birds jeans with zippers on back pockets who was found shirtless in La Joya, one mile from the river. The worn jeans that helped identify his body in the news more times than a photo of him while alive. (I never knew why the birds are angry. My mother said someone stole their eggs.) The Tejas sun took a boy I do not know, a young man who wanted to reach Chicago, his brother's number etched in his belt, his mother's pleas not to leave in white rosary beads he carried. The sun in Tejas stopped a boy the river held. Detention centers filled, churches offer showers and fresh clothes. Water and a covered porch may have waited at a stranger's house or in a patrol truck had his body not collapsed. Half of our bodies are made of water, and we can't sponge rivers through skin and release them again like rain clouds. Today at the vigil the native singer sang we are all connected by water, la sangre de vida.