¿Te acordas?
Cuando el mundo solía ser una
película y vos eras la protagonista.
Cuestión de suerte para mí,
porque los pobres diablos
viviendo en el Polo Sur
eran extras que nunca iban
a llegar a la pantalla, pero
yo era tu personaje secundario,
y cuando estaba con vos, las
cosas también se jugaban el
cuello para girar a mirarme.
La vida estaba a la espera de lo próximo que íbamos a hacer juntas. Todo era un invento, todo estaba guionado, todo una coreografía.
Alguien orquestó años de salidas y
llegadas a la terminal de tren solo
para que nosotras pudiéramos
tomarlo una vez. Las noticias
solamente existían mientras
tuviéramos la tele prendida.
Las tormentas eran una nube
gigante siguiéndonos
a todos lados.
Así se sentía.
Como si todo nos siguiera,
y como si fuéramos a
seguirnos a cualquier parte.

Desde que lo plantan, lo esperan a él.
Se comenta, se murmura, se chita y se vuelve a susurrar
que ya llega, que ya viene, que ya está acá.
El Amante, pasando por al lado de la multitud agolpada entre hamacas y sube y bajas para verlo caminar hasta el árbol de la plaza. Sentándose a upa de las raíces del olmo y sacando una lima para afilar la uña de su dedo corazón en silencio sepulcral. La misma uña que usa para dibujar la inicial de la Amada.
¿Todo un barrio en vilo por esto? ¿Por dos mayúsculas escritas a mano en un tronco? ¿Un Letra + Letra sin un signo igual que diga el porqué de tanta suma?
Por esto, no. Porque cuando se levanta y se abre paso, nadie corre al árbol a leer y releer la ecuación inútil en el marrón, sino que siguen con la mirada el dedo que el Amante alza en el aire.
Ahí, entre la piel membrillo de la yema, un pelo de madera atravesándola.
Por esto, si. Por tenerla astillada debajo de la uña. Llevarla como madera en la carne. Clavarte en un lugarcito de mí, amor. Clavarme al lado del árbol y esperarte, Amor.

No pasa nada si vuelvo.
El colchón nuevo todavía no se acuerda de mí,
no me va a extrañar después de un solo día.
Solo pasó un día.
¿Puedo volver solo un día?
Es que me sigo durmiendo con los zapatos puestos,
cruzando la calle sin mirar a los dos lados,
vistiéndome con quemaduras de sol todo el verano.
Todavía necesito que me disfraces como a una muñeca
para no llegar al trabajo manchada o desnuda,
que me agarres de la mano como a la correa de un perro
para que no termine en una calzada juntando moscas,
que me vistas con protector solar
para que no se me pele la piel como cáscara.
Un día, ma,
y me acompañas al médico a ver por qué me están volviendo a crecer los dientes de leche,
y pasamos por mi casa de un día a mirar abajo de mi colchón de ni una noche a ver por qué le están creciendo monstruos.
Uno solo.

I think I might have loved her the most not when she was chest to toe next to me, but the nights that followed right after those.
The next day, at four in the morning, when I would go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and come back to my bed being nothing but a mattress and still-fitted sheets, no one to lump under the covers, no one to kick them down for me, no sleepy paradox velcroed to my back while complaining about the gluey heat.
Those nights, I loved her the way only children, dogs, and I know how to: a bit desperately and with no civility, every reason why she wasn't there unreasonable, every door a door to wait by for her to walk through.

Enamorar nunca me gustó. En-amor, como
si fuera un lugar al que llegar. Amor, el nombre de uno de esos países que el planisferio no le dedica más de dos gotas de tinta, jugando a la escondida entre isla e isla. O Amor, una escultura tallada a mano en la cima de una montaña solamente a un ferry, tres combinaciones de subte, un avión y medio y mil novecientos treinta kilómetros de donde yo estoy ahora. O Amor, lo que reseña tras reseña me prometió que es la mejor suite de este hotel. Una habitación a la que entro dejando los zapatos afuera, golpeando la puerta con dos nudillos y no más, asomando la cabeza como preguntando si puedo pasar o ya está ocupada (siempre esperando encontrarme a alguien cambiando las sábanas, al dueño mismo, a la huésped anterior que se llevó la llave de souvenir y vuelve cuando no hay nadie más que haga bulto para mantener la habitación llena).
Que si alguien más saca un pasaje de ida para ir al Amor y quedarse a vivir o si pasa de visita cada vez que tiene días de vacaciones, puede ser.
Yo nunca fui al Amor, nunca estuve en él, porque mi amor no tiene bandera ni llave ni cima.
Amor, el nombre de pila del cartero que espío desde mi ventana mientras se acerca a la puerta de la casa enfrente. El único Amor que conozco, que trabaja de ocho a cinco pero que no llega a tu puerta hasta las seis, porque en el medio se queda sin nafta, dobla en la esquina que no es, lee mal la dirección, duda de si tocar el timbre o hacer palmas, y que cuando le abrís la puerta te tiende una pila de sobres con mi letra. Amor,
el que te dice, hay una chica que te sigue escribiendo. No sabe hacer otra cosa.

You're born with wet paper for a voice.
It drips whenever you open your mouth,
makes a puddle on the floor wherever you go.
When they pull your wisdom teeth out,
your gums bleed toner,
and red lipstick shades
always turn copper.
You leave your first kiss' mouth's
black,
and you talk,
try to tell him sorry,
it'll go away,
I'll wipe it off,
but the words cry ink,
and you get harder and harder to read
until you're just one blob of color,
and all you do is stain.

You sit under the sun,
stick out your tongue,
and dry yourself out.
Wordless, but you're
lipstick red
and inkless blood
and a blank page for a voice.

Can I crash into you?
Burning rubber cologne
and a dislocated number plate,
I've dressed the part
for you to take me out.
I'll only fume like a wreck
and then melt like rubble.
I'll turn my nose to a pulp
trying to meet the bone in your chest,
and I'll bend my hands to your back
with the sound of wrenching metal,
like rusty parts of something
that shouldn't have been driven out this far.

Take me out,
I promise to dress the part.
I'll order the bones,
scrape the meat
off them and
onto your plate.
Spoonfeed me scraps,
and I promise I’ll get the bill,
and I’ll say thank you,
how sweet,
how full,
how whole I feel!
Can we do this again?
I'm free tonight,
just take me out.

Me acuerdo de tener seis años, de estar sentada en la mesa de la cocina, de levantar la vista de donde estaba hundiendo las uñas en una fruta para desvestirla, y de encontrar suspendida en el aire a una bolita blanca, como algodón pero más flaca.
Dejé los párpados al lado de la cáscara para pelar los ojos y mirar a lo que no podía ser otra cosa que el esqueleto de un pompón entrar por la ventana.
¿Era un insecto?
Arácnido, capaz.
¿Viviría por días o por horas?
Voló hasta que llegó a la mesa de la cocina, se paró al lado de mi cáscara de mandarina, y yo no me pregunté por insectos ni arácnidos ni por días ni por horas, sino por como algo sin alas podía igual volar.

Capturé a una, una vez. No con un aplauso, como haría con un mosquito, pero con manos juntas y ahuecadas, dedos como rejas que supieron enjaularla, y la adopté como mascota.
La paré sobre uno de mis nudillos con pies que ella no tenía y la acerqué a un pedazo de durazno, esperando a que volara desde mi mano hasta la fruta que estaba mudándose a marrones en colores y a podrido en gusto, para que coma con una boca que yo no veía.
Intenté una y otra vez. La mimé, la acaricié con cuidado de no quebrarla, le susurré que fuerza, que vamos, comé algo. Y ella no se dio ni vuelta a mirarme, y yo viví con un gusto amargo en la boca que tenía cualquier cosa en la que apoyara los dientes. Hasta que una noche la bolita se dió a la fuga, y yo me ahogué en duelo hasta que llegó algo nuevo a casa. Algo con cuatro patas, con dientes que yo si veía, una lengua que me daba besos cuando le tendía la fruta más rancia que podía encontrar al fondo del cajón de la heladera, y la bolita me olvidó, y yo la olvidé.

Pasa un tiempo de algún tamaño hasta que aprendo que esa bolita con espinas incontables como pelos en ***** no era insecto, ni araña, ni vivió, ni murió.
Diente de león, le dice mi mamá, lo pronuncia igual que cómo cuando yo le señalo algo de plástico o de metal, redondo o plano, en cuatro ruedas por la calle o echando raíces en el pasto, y le pregunto qué es eso.
Diente, yo repito, no cómo un qué, sino como un nombre, y pienso en mi Diente. Mascota, prisionera, compañera. Su cucha un frasco vacío de mermelada y sus días un montón de nada, de tratar de escaparse cada vez que soplaba el viento y de hacerme echar a perder como fruta vieja cada vez que llegaba la hora del almuerzo y Diente no comía, ni lloraba, ni gritaba, ni me miraba.
Diente ni siquiera era flor, aprendí mucho después, sino una congregación de semillas que nace de una flor amarilla y prende vuelo por el aire hasta que vuelve a tocar tierra, para que broten nuevos dientes, nuevas flores, nuevas semillas, y se repita.
Y entonces no la culpo a mi Diente. Era solamente un ramo de flores por nacer.
Yo igual me enamoré.

It's always a house.
In shelved books, in five-drinks-in five a.m talks, in cheap rhymes and lavish ones—commonplace for anywhere you can find words on, a standard metaphor to stumble upon. Infrastructure lets itself be borrowed for anatomy and soul: a soot-tainted chimney standing for smoker’s lungs, the fire burning warm at its feet for scorching anger, the crayon scribbles on nursery wallpapers like the prints of anyone an angry smoker has ever loved, shutters as eyelids and walls for bones and tablecloths for clothes and pillars as brawn.
An easy metaphor, a house as a body. A lazy one. Sluggish, yawning Metaphor, craving a nap, a break from being used up. Boring enough to make me look up from my page and at everyone else sitting around the table, writing about vessels vined in breezeblocks and headache diagnoses from front door knocking. Dreary enough to make me want to leave the room.
So I do. The door closes shut like a wind’s mistake, clicks, and it stands between me and the other side of the bone-white wall, an oaken bodyguard of drowsy writers working on.
Go on. Look around the room.
Chair. Tables. Walls. Oh, a roof leak.
No. Really look, I mean.
Lining paper yellowing in the places where hands and chair tops brushed past for years. Shiny furniture with dust collecting in the crannies out of sight. A bowl of food (dog one, full to the brim—human one, empty with a filthy rim). Rusty hinges and inherited silverware.
Marked up, unkempt on weekdays, prettied up for visitors, its value found in numbers, its keys given out for access, put up for rent or sold to the best offer, filthy, hungry, painted, remodeled, lived in, abandoned—and they won’t let me back in now, but I’m scratching on the body-guard's wooden trunk to write down about body-like house limbs.

Borrow the bones, written on the back of a receipt, nothing else to go off of. An instruction, maybe? To dig a hole in the ground of my backyard and look for what remains of my childhood pet, frail thing now turned to hard nothing. A quote, Neruda's, life is only a borrowing of bones. A metaphor about something always remaining, because even after chewing you up they'll still have to spit out your marrow, or a slight more literal way of asking myself to learn to enjoy having other people's leftovers, because once it's too late I'll be looking at licked clean plates to find the speck of sauce I'm hungry enough to swallow down, porcelain and all.

On the first notebook I ever got myself, for the purpose of gut spilling with hearts for i's dots, a teenager's private diary: How do I forgive her? Saying she’s human means little to nothing. I am too, and I've never forgiven myself. A friend, for living her life in a way I was too green and young to see as anything other than betrayal? My mom, for being. A friend's mother, for not letting her hang out at my place. The love of my life—whoever she was at that year, day, hour of the night.

A draft of a text I never sent, dramatic and with a blinking cursor coming in even more theatrical flashes: I think having you would kiII me. But I've never had anyone and I've never died.

It's a Neruda quote, it was the best friend who never hit me back, and I've never really thought to begin with. It's whatever I want it to be, or else I would have given it an end, put a heart-dotted name to it, sent it, I would have borrowed those bones, forgiven her, had her.

Like any kid who is lucky enough to have the world want him in it, he has been taught how to love—a seminar where his dad shows him how to strip aloe vera in two to lay it over spots the sun has shined on for too long, a whole class dedicated to how his mom keeps on telling him stories to sleep even when he’s grown enough to read on his own.
The thing is, even though he had technically attended every lesson, he’d never thought he would need to pay attention to the instructions. So when it’s his turn for show-and-tell to go up to the front of the class and demonstrate how it’s done, he loves as if he's been forced to improvise.
Scene unscripted, role unrehearsed, character unprepared, all he can think about is how she had looked the moment right before, sunburnt by his bedside lamp on the pitch black of the room to showcase smoldered pores and the limestone of her thighs, skin that stands behind the pale line telling apart the stretch of her legs that had tanned over the summer and the one not even the sun had been allowed to kiss.
You can try to keep your plants well fed and end up overwatering them. You can lay under someone else's bedroom lamp and end up bulb-burnt. You can improv love and end up with violence. The lovers always lose at love—who else could lose the game other than the players?—because if practiced love can kiII, amateur love has every chance of leaving them as dust.
And no lesson in the world could have prepared him for that—not for the violence or the dust or the peeling skin or the failed classes—but to run a hand over a place that hasn't ever been even at sun's reach, and know he's going to be stripping aloe vera to soothe the scars he'll leave for time to come, and that he'll be telling unscripted, unrehearsed stories that stretch on and on to avoid reading out their end—(that no one, not even the sun wins).

learn to love a mother
who has given you her nose
and a place you could call home
if you just said the word.

it's a house,
with windows that are never kept clean for long
because your mother always,
without fail,
accidentally sprays them with the garden's hose.
she's a mother to the lilies and the weeds,
and you want to gloat in your rooted siblings' faces,
let them know they are playing a losing game
because you're already the favorite.
you're the one who got the nose and the house.
learn to call it a home.

love your mother because she has given you
enough pieces of advice
for you to have put together the puzzle by now.
love her because she has cradled you
when you were a tenth of yourself and
somehow more helpless than you are today.
you've already been taught how to appreciate
even what you can't remember being done for you,
but learn that this is one of those things, too.

your nose is a hook, given to you by your mother
when she told you not to rush down the hallway,
knowing you only ever feel like running
when being asked to go slower,
and the fall you take then
leaves it temporarily purple,
permanently crooked.
learn to love it before she tells you to.

You’re fifteen, and you're stuck in traffic.
You’re not driving, because you’re fifteen—that’s the bus driver’s job, to lay one hand on the gear stick and the other on a forehead baptized by summer, smoothing down car horn wrinkles and green-light degree burns.
Everything can be put down into numbers, except maybe infinity, or the amount of places where someone else is digging an elbow or a knee into you. You break the picture of it down into germs, then cells, then atoms, and let the flyspeck of it distract you from the fact it’s someone else’s bone making itself home into your skin, a tic-tac-toe played on your calves between the knees of a man going home and a woman clocking out of work, as they leave your legs in carnation X's and O's, all red wilting blotches, and one of their shoulders fits like a tetris piece between two chunks of your spine to stroke it periwinkle, a small blue sorry excuse for a bruise.
The song playing in your ears loops again. It’s the only thing you've been listening to for the last week and you don't think you can tell when it begins and when it ends anymore, and it's possible you can hear it even when your earphones are off. (They’re on, right now. You know it so because you can feel the ache of them against the jelly bone of your ears’ shell. Or maybe the ghost of a feeling has fooled you once and shamed on you.)
It's finals season and you feel like you're wasting every minute you're not staring at the flow chart on the bottom of your backpack. Something about cells, and one of them having a heart while the other one doesn’t. (This is your first year of university. You can’t be fifteen. Maybe you just feel like you are. Fooled you twice, shame on you.)
You're eighteen, and you’ve lived with yourself long enough to know you can't stop thinking, but why can't it ever be something good? Like remembering the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells without needing to look at a flow chart (which is the one with the heart?), or like figuring out what's the opposite of motion sickness—this nausea you feel from being too still in an unmoving bus (if i give it a name, does it mean it wins?).
You’re eighteen and you can’t help breaking touch into germs and atoms—like you’ll either get sick from it or survive it long enough to study it under a microscope—and you call cells’ nucleuses hearts—as if the real term for them is something to guard your naivety from, a word too crude for a girl made of carnations and periwinkles, no thorns and eggshell frail.
You’re eighteen. How about you baptize yourself, elbow your way out of the crowd and drive the bus for once?

I want to tell the truth
but it's harder than it looks
when I don't know where the line
that divides memories and fantasy lies.
I eat numbers
and rehearse every line I'll ever say,
I crave hunger
and all I know how to do is cry
because nothing ever satisfies.
Is that real or made up?
Do I hate what I am
or just hate me for hating's sake,
because I'm me and I can't ever escape?
For having to be the one
that will forever be there,
for not being able to leave myself.

A line dividing memories from fantasy,
can you show me where it lies?
Because I want to do what I think is right, but now I'm hungry all the time
and nothing ever seems to satisfy.

What is and what isn't because it's yet to be, the blink-long present and the possibility—here they are, tracing the same curved path around each other, each time coming closer and closer, set on colliding. Every inch of the journey anguishes, every trace of consciousness burns—running while knowing running is all there's left to do, and there's no finish line 'cause the end is but the start of something new. Maybe it's all about looking for ways to explain—why someone can be always absent while perpetually being here; why you insistently phrase your thoughts as questions; why I go back to the same places where I once was and where I once wasn't because I was yet to be, the blink-long present and the possibility (...)

Tu vida entera en dos cajas.
Una de cartón, con fotos y cartas y cuadernos y ruidos sordos
contras esquinas marrones
cuando pasa de mano en mano.
Una de madera, con manos y piernas y
tez blanca al borde de la transparencia
y un silencio que se extiende
por metros y por años.
Ojos me buscan y me encuentran
y labios me preguntan cómo
te hubiera gustado esto o aquello,
suponiendo que yo se,
suponiendo que te conocía,
y no se cuanta verdad hay en eso.
Solo se que dentro de años,
con tu caja de cartón olvidada,
cuando seas solo huesos
y pueda pensarte sin pensar,
en los espacios entre tus costillas
y el aire que te llena,
seguirá habitando un deseo,
que cosquilleará, se trepará y se enredará,
formando una telaraña,
uniendo hueso con hueso,
enmarañando tu esqueleto,
pero no habrá nadie para verlo
más que tu caja de madera.

You're wearing green, a dress,
a green dress that used to be mine.
It's night time, sun long set,
and we stand at the end of a pier.
I'm meant to allow the lines to blur,
hear the clock tick and let my eyes stray,
but how I would like to go back
to the same places where we were.
How did it go again?
You're green, undressed,
skin on display that's not mine to own.
It's due time, sun just set,
and we lie in the middle of a pyre.

Saved from dozing off at the seashore by the water lapping at his feet, reaching his heels before it retreats, sand between his toes and sticking to his skin—It should be uncomfortable, but it just makes him want to dig his feet in deeper, roll around on the great expanse of golden soil until he can never fully wash it off—So that this place stays with him for days to come, so he can carry around the sound of waves breaking, the salty smell of seaweed in the air, the feeling of the breeze on his bare skin—So there's never any chance for him to speak, knowing his voice is prone to drown in the water that abruptly meets the shore and the whistle of the wind.

Soft-spoken, rough-edged,
a bit of a loner (God knows why),
a good girl with blood on her hands.
A good girl with a bad childhood,
who learnt hands aren't meant
to be lent but played. She takes
people and rips off their scars like
band-aids, quick so it's painless,
quick so it tears out their hair and
leaves their skin an angry shade of
red. A speech's been in the making
for years, an excuse about being
chewed up and spat out from
the belly of the beast by a father
with ill humour and a mother
unsympathetic, but in the back of
her mind, behind the heavy curtain
that won't let the eye meet what lack
of light is really all about, she knows
she just enjoys the art of pushing
buttons and breaking the dam.
A bad girl with an average childhood,
who learnt loving parents sometimes
aren't enough to prevent ill humour
and a sympathy drought. To you,
she's a girl. That's always been good
enough a reason to fall for.

"If I'm still single by the time I get my first grey hair, I'm marrying you."
When it’s morning and I’m sober and rummaging through my bedside table for painkillers, I’ll wonder how you didn’t take offence at that.
So inconsiderate and foolish and deluded.
You smile like you know something I don't—a language I understand but can't speak, a puzzle I can figure out only when you point out where to start.
"What makes you think I'll be available by then? That I won't already have a dog and a white picket fence with someone else?,” you say.
"Oh, I'll just show up at your door one day, all sad and alone and holding up a single grey hair, and you'll feel so much pity that you'll leave everything behind to run away with me.
And we'll get one of those dogs you love
(a Beagle, you say)
and we'll go to that one country you like—
awfully cold, no fun, city names with fifteen letters,
(Iceland, you say)
and you'll be the one to break us up when I become too much,"
and you laugh,
and (you say, the only reason
I would dump you
is because you smoke like a chimney,
and I'm not marrying into tobacco-smelling rugs and lung cancer at forty two)
So I tell you I quit, pinky-swear on it,
and when you make a face in disbelief,
I take out the last pack of cigarrettes
sitting in the back of my trousers
and toss them from the balcony we stand in,
watching them rain down on the sidewalk
in some sort of dramatic, contaminating declaration of devotion.
When I find the painkillers and I'm back in bed, I'll wonder why I can't remember the rest of the night.
Maybe it couldn't hold a candle to the way you looked when I promised you my own version of a white picket fence.

You walk in after work
to see me sitting in your kitchen floor,
neck craned up,
staring at a cookie tray as it cools down,
and I wait and make a list in my head
of all the reasons why you will finally snap:
1) I used the emergency key you gave me
2) and let myself in with no warning
3) to use your stove and your pantry
4) and I'm inconsiderate and foolish and deluded,
but you drop your bag by the door,
toe off your shoes on the hall,
and take a seat next to me
to watch the steam rise from every cookie at once.

“I can’t have a family.”
“Oh, well… We could always adopt.”
“No, I mean—I can’t have a family. Just can’t.”
I tell you it’s not too late yet, you know? You can still take off your ring and leave—it would break my heart, but I’d get it.
When we're back at the hotel and I'm clear-minded and you're rubbing my shoulder in that spot you know is always tense, I'll wonder how I can be so self-centered.
I made you love me, promised you bureaucracy and an after party and a possible forever, and then I tell you the thing you've wanted your entire life is the one thing I can't get myself to give to you.
“You promised me a Beagle, remember?”
(I did, I say)
“So, how about we start there?”
And in our hotel room, when you press down exactly in the right place, I'll look at you as a bead of sweat rolls down your neck and I’ll think we’re young. We know time passes, but we are yet to find out time weights.
"Dog it is, then"
And it is.
And I’ll wonder how I didn’t realize before what you've really wanted all along.

I try to go about it in different ways.
Once, I read you Siken before bed,
and I take my time when I tell you love always wakes up the dragon,
and when I look up from the page I expect you to say it,
(You're the dragon, you should say)
but all I see is you frowning, pointing at a line you want me to go over,
and I once again say,
Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love.
It's like a religion. It's terrifying.
No one will ever want to sleep with you.
The pity in the white of your eyes makes my head spin,
and I wonder how you can feel compassion for the inconsiderate and the foolish and the deluded.
And then it hits me.
And then I pity myself too.

"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
"Then everything that can, will," you say, and you hold my hand.
I don't think that's how it works.
"Us. We can," you go on.
And I wonder what you'll do if our carpet ever smells of smoke or we never adopt that dog.
"Then we will," I say.
And somehow, we do.

ruth keeps waiting for it.
her girlfriend cups her face with gloved hands, and ruth guesses this is as good a time as any.
after having a cup of her favorite tea at the coffee shop that witnessed their first date and now their nth one—babbling, laughing, kissing, refilling drinks, shins pressing together under the table and lips never staying still. after she drops ruth off at her front door and makes sure she's content. while facing the chilly wind with one of two hearts hanging by a thread. she draws circles on her cheeks, ephemeral warmth, and ruth waits, everlasting dread.
it's not you, it's me. it was good while it lasted, but it's just not working out for me anymore. we're better off as friends. she's gonna pull out all the stops, and the worst part is that she's gonna mean all of them. it gives ruth no room to get mad and put the blame on her, so with warm hands tilting her head up, she awaits, dreadful.
“i had fun today,” is what she gets instead, an air of elation about it that ruth can't quite understand. “thank you.”
“for what?”
she shrugs, smile never hesitating. “just—everything.”
hands pull ruth that last bit closer to her and she leans down to leave a peck, quick and light. her hold does nothing but get warmer by the second. not that ephemeral anymore.
ruth blinks. “text me when you get home?”
it's like an hourglass. you can turn it over as many times as you like, but the sand will merely continue to flow.
on the bus on their way back from school, when they kiss goodbye at the doorstep after one of them's over for dinner, during a study date at the library where they will whisper yell every conversation, over the phone on a tuesday night after hours. it always feels like it's about to come, yet it never does.
ruth keeps waiting for it.

You want to figure it out—how to touch him without feeling like that's where he's supposed to be, under your fingertips and deep underneath your skin, because it's so lonely there—in the crevices between your bones and in the path your blood runs time and time again—and you don't wish it on him, to be the one thing that forever stays still.
You have you and you have no one and somewhere along the line they became one and the same—If you never move on and grow earthwards instead of up, doesn't that count as settling down?—If you stand in a quiet room staring at a broken clock, can't you still work out the world?
You try to speak up, but your voice wavers and breaks, a faltering tendril of unexpressed sense. You think of not being able to give him this—your words detangling themselves and only having a bunch of letters you can't make sense of and a heavy heart there's no getting rid of—and you try again.
You say, "I want to, and yet—"

A beam of light suspends the asymmetry of reality and divides darkness in perfect halves, starting from the door sill, spreading like a yarn ball unraveling, and stopping at the tip of my toes, just when the light runs out of thread.
I've been warned, I have. To touch it is to burn, and there's no beauty in scars.
And yet, I want to swallow it — I want to lean forward enough for my face to feel the warmth, to see gold and scarlet and the color of worship behind closed eyes — lean in another bit and soak in the feeling of fire fawning over my cheeks, of red sitting on my lips — and then, then I would open my mouth, ready to drown in the sun, but not without first promising I'll show you how to take pride in sharing scars, if only you too lean into the light.

i trace the line
where missing becomes longing
across the map of your back,
playing a tune
only i can hear
on the keys of your spine,
and i hope memory
isn't lost in the afterlife,
because this is the one moment
i yearn to never leave behind

i plug on my earphones
or turn up the radio
i hear someone hum
or put on a record
and every time i ponder
how you’ve managed to get into the hearts
of all these people singing about
honeyed naivety and feelings the color of wine
because i can't conceive the thought
of writing a love song without you in mind
who else is there to fall for?
how can there be love
that doesn't involve you?
you own tenderness
and inherited devotion
and i'm reminded of it
every time i plug on my earphones
or a car radio
hear someone's hum
or your favorite record

Lights on, first act.
Scrambling for words, you stand up on unsure feet—you weren't given a script. You hate improv, that's all you can think.
Silence finds home in the crowd and settles down, nausea circles its arms around your heart, and even-numbered eyes watch you breathe in and out.
But then a hand pushes you back to your seat, and delivers the finest speech, and you're saved from blues browns and greens blinking at your every feat.
You like this, you think, as the second act begins.
On your chair you keep, thinking up your own scene, one detailed to the last bit.
But carrying it out might be a risk, because the voice of the hand that held you down remains rattling about, and it would be a pity, wouldn't it? To stand up from this silky cushioned seat and strain your own two feet, in the hopes that you can deliver better lines than these.
You like this, you're sure, safe and sound when you're far from the lights.
The voice drones on and on, and you listen just closely enough to know when it's your cue to act, mere moments that flash by once a while.
But as the third act starts, you wait for the voice to speak up, only to find silence and uncountable wondering eyes. A minute passes by, and you know that if you were to stand up no one would flout.
You're free to do your thing, begin your thought up scene with its meticulous script, and how scary that is with blues browns and greens staring at your unsteady feet.
You hate this, you know. How are you to learn all this, all the lines the voice was supposed to speak? Or should you say some of your own? No, that ought to be wrong, your story is not yours.  
So you remain sat and forbid the third act to wind down until a new voice and an unknown hand come with their own script at last.
It's all fine—as long as you can't be the one to blame for the ending claps or a jeering crowd, you can deal with blue-green-brown waiting for you to stand up.

Sometimes,
when you pour shaken up soda too quickly,
the foam grows,
goes up and up,
and you’re left staring at the glass
in hopes that it doesn’t fizz over,
only to stop right when it reaches the brim.

There’s times he feels like that,
like there’s something building up in his chest
and at the very tips of his fingers, threatening to make a mess and spill over.

But then the buzz dies down,
him emptying the glass
with a light chest and steady hands.

Until,
with time,
it happens all over again,
like an itch he can never scratch away.

He takes and takes,
keeps it all in
and never says a word.

He's afraid one day
the foam will grow one inch too many,
and the glass will overflow.

For now,
he lets the foam be,
and dreams of the day his glass doesn't fizz over
'cause he took a sip
before it was too late.

Raindrops tap against my window,
a steady rhythm
that lulls me to restlessness,
'cause the rain is my only friend,
and what a pity it would be
to miss what she has to say.

So I lay awake
while I let my friend pour rivers,
soddening the streets
with a swash of release,
and how I wish I could, too,
make a downpour so heavy,
a whirring so liberating,
because tears prove to be
far less effective.

write a poem to the moon,
she is lonely and dark,
tell her you'll miss her
when daylight comes around,
even if you'll play under the sun,
and that you can't wait
to bask in her light,
even if you both know
it's never been hers,
'cause it's all about the illusion
of being loved and loving back,
so write the moon a poem
with the sun in mind.

Sometimes it all feels like I'm listening to a foreigner talk in an unrecognizable language.
Every sentence seems like an entirely too long word, syllables merging together and making me unable to tell where each one begins and ends. I can only make out the bigger picture, the anger behind their tone or the eagerness in their face, but it still means listening intently to what might as well be nonsense.
It’s talking and not being understood. It’s trying to make sense of something I can’t wrap my head around. It’s being a foreigner in my own house.

there's a calendar
on my bedroom wall.
pages gone yellow,
its corners turn to sand
if you pull too hard
or look at it long enough.
there's no sticky notes,
no hurried scrawls,
not since long ago.
i merely cross out the days
with a wavering hand,
the elephant in my chest
easing with each passing day.
there will be new notes,
new scrawls,
new things to come,
days won't be crossed out
no more.
but not just yet,
not for today.
for now,
i let the corners
turn to sand
and draw a cross
with unsteady hands.

you're still the only thing in mind
during my early mornings and late nights,
and i dread the moment i finally get over you,
because i don't quite know who i am
without you constantly in my thoughts

are you sleeping fine?
is your mum alright?
are you happy by his side?
do you think of me every night?

i never meant to use you,
but i also never meant to love you,
and i'm sure you never meant to hurt me,
but we can't live off intentions,
just as i can't live feeling vacant

please send flowers,
don’t let me rot under the burning sun,
pray to a god we don’t believe in,
cry in my father’s arms

please hide my poems
and all of my novels,
burn each book i’ve ever read,
anything i’ve ever said is to be erased

please never forget
i was a godsent,
i was your pride,
never anything more beautiful
has ever come into your life

please whisk away my soul
and bury it in yours,
deep in your heart under lock,
so it’s never to be sold or lost

you are not a star nor the sun,
for your light isn't far away,
lost in the distance,
or blindingly bright,
from dusk till dawn,
but rather a source of comfort
in the pitch black darkness,
fading and fragile,
vulnerable to the softest sigh,
like a candle on its way to burning out

but you make it work,
you fight through the threatening wind,
you stare at the abyss with calmness in your heart

you are the moon,
the guiding light i hold on to
each and every night

ya no se como usar las palabras. se sienten como un buzo regalado, viejo, estirado, que me llega a las rodillas y me cubre los puños. cualquiera puede ver lo inmenso que es en mi, lo ajeno, lo usado, lo reciclado. porque así son mis palabras: son de otros, usadas, reutilizadas, usadas de nuevo, para dar mensajes baratos en los que no creo.
¿cuanta gente usó las mismas palabras que yo, con la misma intención, en un mismo orden? ¿puedo reclamar algo que ya fue usado, que ya fue preguntado y respondido y olvidado? ¿es mio porque yo lo diga? ¿mis palabras serán las suyas? ¿las tuyas?
no se como usarlas porque se siente como si nunca me hubieran pertenecido. si son suyas o tuyas, no me importa, porque nunca fueron mías.

antes, inmensas, sentía que me miraban fijo desde las páginas mientras las trazaba, con miedo de usarlas y darles un significado tan vacío que dejarán de existir, que las convirtiera en la nada misma. y ahora pasaron de ser el manto que cubre el mundo a un pañuelo al fondo de mi cartera.
siempre tuve miedo de usarlas mal, de describir algo tan insignificante que sobrara todo lo que le diera. nunca se me ocurrió encontrarme con algo más grande que cualquier palabra, más complejo que lo que cualquier combinación de letras y espacios pueda llegar a ser.
las palabras nunca me fallaron hasta que hiciste que se vieran diminutas a tu lado.