a new family

 pouring drinks to share between us, your mother laughs at the new man I’ve become around your familia, pours me more and more luring a hyena out with salt and lime and liquor. She asks me questions while your abuela laugh at my broken Spanish, Él es un chico torpe coqueteo she says. As I throw compliments like dollars to your cousins to aunts they would have accepted either. You are helping to cook. As I talk sports with your papa he always liked the raiders. Scowling like how their win to loss record would look in person as I praise the rams. My sight blurred by haze but my ability to smell is getting better, aromas fill the house as chorizo is ground,  empanadas frying in oil, your cousin is bouncing on my knee, chilis releasing heat, red onion until steam clouds the room and laughter colors it gold like the morning mist, tasting of sea air, wetting my eyes. What lies between us feels thin as this mist, clouding the lungs thick to breathe. Your laughter echoes through the halls as a bite into an empanada releasing a sound causing your family to laugh and scream "A él le gusta! ¿Cómo es la comida mexicana real?" And your aunt blushes as her daughter snorts out of her heavy painted mouth "Es mejor que whey?" She berates her language but your sister says " Sólo porque es con ángel" grinning and winking through her dark veil of hair splayed over her eyes. Your mother screams your father laughs as you run out the kitchen yelling all the way. You push them away from me. Spilling our drinks as you reach through the veil and your hands sober me up as your lips suck the salt from mine and you ask in that tone of yours "which is better mi amore?" pouting, looking like your father. I replied with certainty, you, taking a bite