take a step
into the all
unknown

I wanted to jump into your skin
and navigate my way through your veins.
I wanted to sneak into your blood
and flow to every inch of you.
I wanted to leave no corner untouched
I wanted to be what you needed to survive
and what you couldn't live without.
But you wanted me gone
like I was a disease.
You wanted to be prescribed medicine that would get rid of me
once and for all.
I choked on my words
when I told you that you were the moments I wanted to remember
but the syllables rolled so effortlessly off your tongue
when you told me that you had already forgotten.
I looked into your eyes and I thought I saw myself
but when I checked a second time there was a no vacancy sign
I had not yet recognized.
I wondered what you saw when you looked into mine
and it struck me that maybe you never really had.
Maybe you didn't even know what I had eyes
because apparently you didn't know that I had a heart
and a soul
and a brain
and a ******* backbone
because you never saw those parts of me
when we were laying alone
drunk and half-clothed.
You never saw my heart and soul because
I never responded when the whole bottle of *** you drank
told me it loved me.
You never saw my brain because you never asked me about my life
or what I was passionate about.
And you never saw my backbone because every time you called me
I would gladly come.
To you I was merely the clear liquid you poured down your throat
until you couldn't see or walk straight.
To me you were so much more
than the contents of a shot glass
but ****, you burned like those drinks did
but with you it didn't stop in my throat
and I couldn't chase you down
with some carbonated beverage
no,
you stuck around and burned through every last part of me
until there was nothing left but ashes
like the ones you find in the remnants of an old house
barely recognizable,
the entire foundation crumbled.
No one could ever tell how beautiful the house once was
or how the light used to shine through the giant windows in the morning.
They could only see what it became.
Nothing.
Nothing like what you told me you felt.
In the middle of the night when you couldn't sleep
it wasn't me who was running across your mind.
Nothing like when I picked you up from that party
because you were too drunk to drive
and you left your contact on my seat
and I threw it away.
Nothing like when I woke up at 3 am in your bed
and my mom asked me what I'd been doing all night
and that is what I told her.
Nothing.
Nothing like what I saw when you led me down the steps to your pool
and it was so dark that I didn't know
anything else existed besides us two.
Nothing like what you told everyone else what we were
even though I did everything for you
for longer than I can even remember
and even though you made
two summers a little bit hotter
and the sun move a little bit closer to the Earth
because they envied us
and wanted to be together too.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing
And if I say it too many times
the word starts to change.
It gets stuck on my tongue
and turns into something else
and for so long I thought our nothing
would turn into something else too
but I was wrong.
Because people aren't like words.
You can't change them or make them to what you want.
If they are nothing,
nothing they will stay.

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
****** it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.