I
I think of her.
All the time.
When the world is quiet.
When the world screams.
When the coffee goes cold,
when the wind slips through the cracks
and there’s nothing left to do but endure.
I think of her even when I don’t want to.
Even when it hurts.
Even when my body begs to forget
and my mind refuses to obey.
I think of her the way one thinks of a wound:
with anger,
with tenderness,
with thirst,
with every goddamn hope that it might heal.
And suddenly,
just like that,
a word from her —spoken in passing,
without knowing what it meant—
arrives.
It slips between my ribs
and mends me.
Not completely.
Not forever.
But just enough to survive another day.
Bless that hour.
Even if silence returns
to shatter me once again.
II
You don’t tell the cloud
how to rain.
It comes down on its own
when May splits open,
and lets itself fall.
You don’t tell the sunflower
when to open to the sky.
It wakes in September,
and the field —suddenly—
changes shape.
Frost doesn’t ask.
It simply shows up.
And in December,
the rooftops awaken
as if they’d dreamed
of heaven.
And you don’t ask either.
You just arrive.
And my soul comes undone.
You barely look at me,
and already my world is ending.
As if you were
June, mist, bloom,
August, hail,
wet earth,
fog over the cornfield,
the wind in the jacarandas,
lightning before thunder,
the cricket’s song at the edge of sleep,
the first leaf falling in October,
the river’s voice in January,
hearth smoke in November,
February’s silent sorrow.
The tremble of the land in March,
the scent of fire in clothes,
the rooster’s echo at odd hours,
April’s dust along the roads,
the sun cracking stones in July,
the warm shade of a ramada,
ripened fruit falling on its own,
the night’s quiet crackle,
the longing for something that hasn’t happened yet
but is already becoming,
autumn, winter, spring, summer.
It just happens.
Like you.
Like this.
Like loving without cure.
III
I woke without the usual sweat.
The cold came close,
but didn’t touch me.
The sky —
gray, low, weary—
spilled in silence.
And I
Inside
left myself rain.
IV
Man is born good.
But then he sees those eyes
brown, deep,
like forests in autumn,
like wine spilled in the dusk,
eyes that cry and burn,
that beg and condemn,
eyes of dark honey,
of shadow that caresses.
And it’s them that corrupt him.
V
Maybe she doesn’t answer
because she doesn’t know what to do with tenderness.
It slips through her fingers
like water she never asked for
to quench her bitterness.
No one ever said sweet things to her.
No flowers ever came,
no words turned to shade
for the sun in her days.
So when I speak to her
—when I say she’s
like good rain on dry earth—
she recoils,
as if the wind were speaking
or a ghost returned just to say:
“Look, there’s love here too.”
But I go on.
I go on because I know
that one day her eyes will believe me.
And that day,
the world will feel less arid.
VI
It’s not for lack of flesh,
or fear of touching her.
It’s just that what awakens in me when I see her
isn’t flame,
but breeze.
I imagine her with a basket of oranges,
walking barefoot across a warm patio,
laughing at something silly I said.
I picture her sitting beside me
as the sun slowly hides
behind the hill,
and the coffee grows cold on the table
because her voice holds me longer than the sip.
I don’t want her body,
I want her shadow next to mine
on the dry ground,
her steady step as we walk to the river.
I want her to tell me the names of flowers,
to teach me to make thin tortillas,
to mend unraveled seams,
to laugh when the corn disobeys me,
to sing me joyfully at dawn.
Yes, I desire her—
but like one longs for rain in May:
so what’s inside me may bloom.
I desire her like one longs for shared silence,
like you cherish a stone to sit on
as dusk unravels the day.
I want her eyes to care for me,
to name me without a word,
to keep me in her palm
like a good seed.
I imagine her for long things:
for afternoons with bread and honey,
for walks down old streets,
for pointless chats,
for falling asleep to her telling
stories of her childhood.
It’s not desire that burns.
It’s affection.
And affection doesn’t burn:
it lights.
