Dinner with My Daughters

Feigning ordinary hunger,
I take them to Lalo’s 
for enchiladas. 
 
Reflected in the window,
my face wavers, streaked
with rain and headlights.
 
I check the pane 
for signs, my mind
roiled by revelations
 
of spots on a screen
seen through a scope, 
what the doctor—
 
how dare he?—
called three bullets 
in a five-chambered cylinder. 
 
I hadn’t believed
a mother, too, is mortal.
Any questions? 
 
Only, how to tell my children. 
We plunge
sopapillas into honey.