I am sure that everyone in my familia really enjoys flan.

But not me.

May I please taste the glazed churro,

the timeless cochito (con café and cream) or the delicate

tres leche cake.

But leave the flan on the kitchen counter

with the big can of lard, or better yet in the oven where

it may be forgotten like the untold history of the southwest.

For over fifty years my familia has asked, “You

don’t like flan? I don’t believe you.” Believe me, again, otra ves.

Flan is the caramel brick used to make the walls

Chupacabra proof. It is the drum beat that cannot keep

up with the rest of the instruments. It is the car lifted

on bricks in the front yard. The place where the chickens go

when it rains or when los ninos escape

into the yard with water balloons.

In my imagination Cantinflas only ate the flan

to perpetuate a stereotype. El Cucuy hides in the closet with

pieces of flan sliced up by his cuchio. Scared children smell

the sweet fear. I never saw a painting by Rivera

with flan as a detail, and did anyone

ever notice Frida Kahlo holding a piece of flan in her portraits?

In Orozco’s The Fall of Icarus, no flan in the sky

or in the sea. Face it flan is the overconsumed overrated dessert.

Chavela Vargas sang of the desperate crushed spirited Llorona or the

desire of the chili verde but not the flan.

Fernando Valenzuela threw the no-hitter and became the

icon of the Dodgers without flan.

Most have seen those colorful Mexican restaurant

calendars. The images are of Aztec warriors, bull fighters, mariachi musicians

and maybe even a clown tugging a rope held by a small perro’s boca.

But no flan in those popular prints.

My parents, brother and wife (who is from the Irish home tierra)

never bake up the flan.

But they do ask for it after their tacos, enchiladas and frijoles. Or a friend

will drop by my parents’ house gifting a sheet of flan. The sweet dripping

over the edges creating a sticky chaos. The caramel looking

 like a ruptured oil pan. Hay caramba.

“Do you want un poco de flan?” They will ask. I will not

reply with “no” that lacks any meaning. I will just gesture

with my ten fingers and puckered lips. Gestures beyond

words. A silence meaning more than a no.

Let’s go there instead of ambition’s graveyard. We can walk and talk

about what it means to linger wearing pants with pink patches

and holding shot glasses filled with boredom. The ice cubes scared

of becoming small puddles lapped up by the house cats.

Let’s just go already with our samples of destiny rubber banded together

in our backpacks which become quiet spaces in the back

of a gorgeous crowd. We can walk past the neighbor’s white

picket fence that crashed down. The wood rotten under

the soil. The shade the trees provide will help us remain cool.

Vamos hoy and claim the feeling of life in a certain moment:

the first kiss, the paleta in the summer at the ballgame, the encore

everyone wanted to hear. We will just read the list of rules.

Being not this and not that. The circumstances are us again. We dance the

big fish. We speak the morning walk. We rest the pan dulce and the pastel.

And who cares where we go?

We must remember this too, when to rage, when to listen,

when to sleep deep into the dream, when to drink more water. We have

clean shirts, peanut butter, phone numbers of impossible lovers

and we can get haircuts or not. Let’s go before mud season arrives

and the soil rises over the sidewalks and our shoes sink like a dirty sponge

in a sink full of dinner dishes. Vamos, even con the risk

of forgetting what plans we composed down on brown paper grocery bags

and promised to others.

The boss is not always right

but they are always the boss.

The pin stripes are there

reading bad newspapers

near the elevator. The shoes

polished up in fear.

This is what my amigo,

the rush hour ruffian says,

“After hours love is free”

But how soon is now?

Work is waiting for more

work. (The ejection button

is not in the employee

handbook). And you know this,

anxiety is a luxury too.

It seems the goal is

to remain boring

as long as possible.