Rocking Chair Rocket

In abuela’s intergalactic travels,
she encountered many adventures

which she related to us grandkids as bedtime stories.
Scary no-headed monsters,

a two-story tall space princess,
rockets that moaned as they flew

through the living planets of silk and stone.
We’d go to bed past midnight

and dream of abuela in her spacesuit
battling the enemies of Aztlan,

and occasionally we’d have nightmares
which bubbled into daytime,

tales we told our classmates in elementary school
who looked at us with disbelief in their bulging eyes,

and tried to bully us with no success.
Abuela, now old, sits in her rocking chair on the porch.