El Olvido
Photo by Jan van der Wolf, accessed at pexels.com
We all have moments in the past that stay with us. Some of those moments we treasure; others haunt us.
In our fast-paced, ever-changing world, it is often tempting to dismiss the importance of these memories—or even to forget them altogether. But as Judith Ortiz Cofer points out, in doing so, we risk losing far more than the memories themselves; we risk losing our very souls.
El Olvido
by Judith Ortiz Cofer
It is a dangerous thing
to forget the climate of your birthplace,
to choke out the voices of dead relatives
when in dreams they call you
by your secret name.
It is dangerous
to spurn the clothes you were born to wear
for the sake of fashion; dangerous
to use weapons and sharp instruments
you are not familiar with; dangerous
to disdain the plaster saints
before which your mother kneels
praying with embarrassing fervor
that you survive in the place you have chosen to live:
a bare, cold room with no pictures on the walls,
a forgetting place where she fears you will die
of loneliness and exposure.
Jesús, María, y José, she says,
el olvido is a dangerous thing.
From the collection, Terms of Survival (Arte Público Press, 1987).
