On Being Obsequious

She told me obsequious wasn’t the right word,
wasn’t the way to describe that grainy beach in 
loosely translated terms of something yielding
and servile, but here it still is after decades of 

dispute in my head, revisiting the image of my friend 
and I swimming to an island in Acapulco, overcoming 
cuts from anemone and the possibility of being run 
down by daredevils, speedboats, and disparity, how  

we made our way breathless to the crest of that great  
hill where lay pieces of ancient sculpture and discovered
within our younger selves those smoother, quieter things 
stronger than broken bottles, jagged stone, and inequity 

as obvious as a resort’s high noon sun, obvious as 
children braiding the hair of strangers and selling their
soda to earn a few pesos for a large and hungering family, 
I decided to keep the word, keep the memory, because 

so few things are more obsequious than sand sinking 
beneath the grateful knees of someone returned safely 
to shore, and if I can pay more than a peso for something 
cold to drink, something fresh watered, bottled, or canned,

that reflects the day and the state of my heart, I absolutely 
will, and I will keep my choice of obsequious, if for no other 
reason than I love the way it rolls off the wave of my tongue, 
and besides, it is my poem, and besides, it is my life.    

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright April 10, 2024, all rights reserved