"Callar y quemarse es el castigo más grande que nos podemos echar encima. ¿De qué me sirvió
a mí el orgullo y el no mirarte y dejarte despierta noches y noches? ¡De nada! ¡Sirvió para
echarme fuego encima! Porque tú crees que el tiempo cura y que las paredes tapan, y no es
verdad, no es verdad. ¡Cuando las cosas llegan a los centros no hay quien las arranque" --Federico García Lorca
I dreamed I stood alone in the bleakness
At the edge of a rocky desert.
The sky was the color of a day-old bruise.
Mesas and furrowed canyons stretched
Out into the distance and into shadow.
And black feathers rained from that awful sky
Each sharp as my little French pocketknife
With the silver bee on its handle.
I stepped out barefoot to cross the barren land.
***
“This is not about you, or the wind that blows in Santa Fe”
You are not that boy
Who waits for me under so many lights
Who wrote me love letters in French
Who stands just over the horizon.
This is a different kind of heartache.
The nearness of you is sometimes
Too much and I recoil from
The warmth of your body next to me.
And I want to kiss you
And I want to kiss you.
But afraid of all that may or may not mean
I sing you songs in my cracking voice
And think, “this is a different kind of longing.”
And want more than roses and lies from you.
***
You gave me a heart made of screws
Arrayed haphazardly on a blue canvas.
“We are building something,” I thought.
But what structure and to what end
Only the architect knows.