Waiting in a Café for News on Pops’s Life

I try to get lost in thoughts, sitting in a café.

I focus on the world around me:

the fruit vendors hollering,

customers licking their fingers,

gaggles of students giggling in hushed tones,

adults doing the same,

others being too loud to be suspicious (or not).

The barista making coffee in the way

I’ve seen all my life:

whipping up the espumita with what

little sugar she has

the smell, the ringing of the metal

spoon against a metal cup.

How it used to summon the whole family

into the kitchen together,

an afternoon dinner bell.

I try to get lost in thoughts,

of my sister enjoying Varadero

(she doesn’t know)

about the breeze on El Malecón at 4 A.M.

as the rum burns down your throat

disinfecting all the exhaust

from old car pipes and

and BS you’ve swallowed,

from their government, from yours.

And walking so many miles on hot days

and looking for unnamed, unknown tombs,

trying to pray at the feet of Flor

trying to live and breathe with great aunts.

But instead, I stare at the little box

that sits on the table, waiting,

willing for it to ring,

as it burns through wifi cards,

like how all the tourists I laugh at do.

The box would hold secrets of

medical testing

that we’re waiting for.

The box holding the eventual answer of what’s

growing in Pops’ brain,

in what’s growing in my brain,

as all the fears of what could be lost,

and all the potential tumors

grow in me, with this box that glows

close to my head.

Glows

with no answers, as I scrape

the sugar, the coffee, the filler,

from the bottom of my cup.

Christopher Louis Romaguera is a Cuban-American writer who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was born in Hialeah, Florida, and graduated from Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He has an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of New Orleans. Romaguera has been published in Passages North, Catapult, and other publications. He is a VONA alum. Romaguera was a 2023 Periplus Fellow. His translation of the novel, Charras: A True Novel Of The Assassionation That Roiled The Yucatan, was published by UNO Press in 2025.