I Should Have Followed You  

"Can I still call you Dorothea?"—even though the black and white lines in the paper reduce you to the habit you wore, arrange you into silence, a name and surname surrendered to the cloistering of lilies. Somewhere beyond this obituary, the grown children you once taught trace grief into their office desks, their minds recalling your half-remembered lessons. The others—those who once marched beside you—remember the compadre who chose devotion over struggle, who vanished into the ghost dust of old revolutionary dreams.  

Once, you were a believer who marched along Che and Fidel, a woman with a true north compass. You were never reckless, never a ghost in Havana’s dusk. You spent your nights writing, sealing letters to revolutionaries. You drank in hope like sugarcane.  

Then, the cause hardened. The slogans lost their breath. When Fidel called the people gusanos (worms) in a moment of drunkenness, you knew you must leave the revolution and Cuba behind. It was a certainty.  

You rooted yourself among the Miami exiles. We met on campus, arguing over a political opinion piece you wrote for the college newspaper. I argued that the Bay of Pigs operation was necessary. You wrote that it was a stupid exercise in democratic colonialism and was doomed to failure. And it was.  

Our love was a bickering affair. My adolescent jokes, mocking what I thought were your misplaced beliefs, chipped our foundation. I believed I was never lost. But I was orbiting a center I refused to name. After the revolution betrayed your faith, you retreated into a steady, quieter certainty—Jesus. He told you to press your palms into the smallest child’s hands. "Teach them lessons in your authentic voice," the command.  

I should have followed you. I could have stepped over the doubt that swelled between us, made a church of our mornings, sheltered in your certainty—if only you laughed more. If only I’d prayed less in jest.  

Now, my fig grows stubborn at my window, its roots strong, its love silent, and I, too, am nearing the end. I would light a candle, Dorothea—but what god still takes offerings from men like me? I will leave a hundred dollars in the box instead, fold your name into my palm, and call this devotion.

You looked so peaceful in your sleep,
When your dreams were the closest they’ll ever be.
Your fingers only grazed the seams
Of a world filled with endless possibility.

The birds still sing, the rivers still flow-
It seems that nothing stops for no one around here.
Your favourite flower sits on the sill;
It knows, somehow, that the sun is due, at any old time.

Although you left so many of us behind,
You left us with a view and it's a beautiful view.
But it would be better shared, with you.
Nevertheless, it's a beautiful view.

I'll meet you when I close my eyes.
You're not so clear there, but it's the closest that I can be.
I look for answers in the sky,
To questions that burn in the front row of my mind.

The sun still shines, the stars still glow-
It seems that nothing stops for no one, anywhere.
I play your favourite song on repeat;
I can almost hear you singing along, for old times’ sake.

Although you left so many of us behind,
You left us with a view and it's a beautiful view.
But it would be better shared, with you.
Nevertheless, it's a beautiful view.

The autumn rain is falling
    Like teardrops from mine eyes;
I cannot help recalling
    With sobs and lingering sighs
               My Fugliana.

The days returning never,
    The golden days of yore,
I thought would live forever,
    Yet gone fornevermore
               Is Fugliana.

With rue my heart is laden;
    L'amour peut être amer.
Nor any rose-lipt maiden
    Was e'er so fair as fair
               Fair Fugliana.

We will not walk again
eat or drink or laugh,
love or **** or sleep or cry
it is the end
when we say goodbye,
all that we were
or could have been is gone
only memory carries on

…at four in the morning,
the room was sharp and silent
through the stillness of the dark
and yet, I sang those old songs
swaying in the cold wind
with bottle upon my breath
as I dreamt of green birds
and the lonely white lotus
that kept fluttering
into my scratched head
while coming apart at the seams
with tears of sadness
I sat and pondered
where they all went:
those little caramel ladies of brown doom
with novocaine souls and enamel bodies;
you gave me the liveliest moments
even when you brought me
to the brink of death,
you have liberated me during
my most shackled state of mind,
you spilled the truth when you
told me, “I could never be reached.”
and therefore I must come to terms
with the absence of your warmth
as the green birds have flown
into concrete skies
and the white lotus has shriveled
into a curling black mass
I sway with the wind,
rising the bottle
and belting out
those old songs
in a room so
sharp and silent
at four in the morning.