Lánguida figura de nazareos rizos negros. Silenciosa presencia de escandalosos apetitos volcánicos, insaciables.

The tang of citrus sun to mute the taste of morning.

Four years have passed since we began working with my mind. To recognize myself more, to reconcile with my demons, and not to die of anxiety.

The coffee cooled untouched, the light shifted, and in that small room of metal and shadow, she felt the strange mercy of being alive: unnoticed, unneeded, but undeniably here.

When I pass a construction site, I avoid walking beneath any ladder that suggests a deadly scalene triangle, and I pray that along my path no fatally black cat crosses my way.

I allowed myself to wither in times of drought, when your words were not constant, and I stretched out my hands to see if I could reach a little of your attention, like someone searching for something in a drawer that has been stirred up over time, knowing they will never find it.

What haunts me are my sighs, and this raw, absolute wanting for you to leave a slow, planetary weight growing inside me.

Tú me enseñaste el arte de acomodar libros y apuntes para aparentar una faena de tareas y sacrificio sobre el escritorio, para conservar el privilegio de quienes se entregan a la noche y la despiden igual, para beberse la madrugada.

I get bored doing nothing, and even though I know I should be doing other things, I never start them.

To rise and search for myself in the timeless waters, to carry myself always until I inhabit my body, to look the monster in the face and rescue myself from myself.

Your footsteps left behind only silence, and I learned to speak with walls that never answer.

I don’t know how to desire without loving because I don’t know how to calm the tide —I’ll wrap my whole body around you, my arms around your neck, my legs at your waist—; the one that rises from my lungs as I try to swim toward your hands once more.

I didn’t see the coordinates; I had no intention of stopping to watch the sunset.

Dance with me inside the thin haze, stir the wind with your windmill arms and provoke the weather; challenge it, snatch away its blues and grays.

But now everything is calm and peace, and a feeling of pleasure foreign to him until that moment. Now he wants to live, but thanks to the war, even if he survives, that will be impossible.

Even though you insist on denying the affection you hide inside, it is enough for me to pause in your gaze, and at once I know you return it.

I could see his home-job hair dye around his mouth, around his hairline, black dye dotted like pepper, like a miniature Kusama, like I don’t prefer salt.

I understand the house as the body that receives us when the world gets too far inside us. Other times I feel the house inhabits me, and I don’t know if it is me or it that breathes.

I just try to survive everyday life and, sometimes after that, I speak out loud, repeating situations from the day, phrases I’ll forget tomorrow, because somehow I know it: I don’t belong here.

Vivía en el futuro del subjuntivo “añorando” por un sujeto que se rehusaba a encarnar sus textos. Una idea que se rehusaba a ser percibida, solo escrita, solo soñada.

Imagine the photograph: a woman alone, on the corner of an island, in the middle of winter, smoking her last cigarette.

Amidst the chaos of my head, I can’t help but imagine how you keep placing poppies in my hair. Let’s lie under this fake aurora borealis with the crisp night air…

I want to smear your face over mine and keep up with your step, pretend we are mushrooms, cursed gargoyles trembling to slow music, two punctured cans, a centerpiece, a set of spoons.

My tongue holds me, and I hold it as my home and my eternal friend. We keep forever the answer to people’s anxious doubt. I show it my cave, I perform an autopsy on myself, and it gives me the word—the sacred word.

Your laughter no longer fits in my nights, it slipped out through windows I never closed.

Dicen que no hay retorno. El invierno llegó, hoy se siente a ocho grados. No sé cuándo voy a volver, pero sí sé lo feliz que puedo ser.

Five springs ago I planted your memory in a tree that dried out, and I am responsible for that; in search of privacy to speak with you, I planted you far from the others.

Muted diminished thirds wobbled over open fifths. She pointed to the center of the guitar and said: the music is there inside, and it comes out on its tippy toes to dance in the light.

On land, your place in it will someday be remembered, and they will cry out who did not save you and hurry out to the sea to cradle you in your rebirth.

Others will come who will keep in their hearts the same useless longings, the same unsatisfied desires, the same foolish ambition that I have.