I want to write you a poem,
One as fragrant as a breeze after the first rain,
carrying the scent of jasmine,
twisting softly through your hair.

I want to tell you how even the flowers, with all their perfumes,
grow jealous of your presence,
their petals fade, knowing they cannot match your grace.

I want to weave words around you,
like a shawl steeped in rosewater and musk,
wrapping you in whispers
that linger long after I am gone.
Like the sun's gentle glow in a cold morning,
warming you everywhere.

I just woke up and—
It’s cold, and I’m tired.
Standing at the bus stop with my neighbors,
my bag heavier than my body,
my head heavier than my bag.

The textbook in my hand lists my exams,
Kingdoms I can’t classify and processes I can’t explain.

The bus driver lives around the corner.
We hear his engine start,
the grumble of morning.
He pulls out,
backs up,
and rolls toward us.

We climb in.
Seats creak.
Heat hums, just barely.

I open the book,
but the letters won’t stay still.

I glance up—
and the sky hits me.

Pastel.
Not pink, not purple—something between.
And it’s almost as if you can smell it—
it smells like—

Like something good.
Not candy.
Not flowers.
Like air after rain, but sweeter—
cleaner.

The sky just exhaled
and the world paused
to breathe it in.

I stare.
Busmates probably think I’m twelve,
staring out the window like I’ve never seen clouds.

But that sky—

It knocks the tired out of my bones.
Cuts through the fog in my chest.
Wipes out the weight of what-ifs and what-nows.

It feels holy, almost.
Not church holy,
but the kind that sneaks up on you
when you don’t believe in much.

I keep looking,
like maybe if I stare long enough,
I’ll stay awake.

And for a moment,
I don’t care about the test,
or the clock,
or the day.

For a moment,
I believe that something out there
is still worth watching.

I’m tracing back to moments I’ve replayed a thousand times,

It’s just a confusing tone
Have the doubts and hatred grown too overblown
Has my perception been ruined on the lies we condone,
On the fleeting pleasure of a throne

Stop and wait a sec
When ten years from now, I look at myself, will I express regret
Do the failures of youth dictate the path we expect,
Or does a stumble define what’s next

An adult all alone,
With nothing to do, he spends his time scrolling through his phone,
With no one to call his own.

But being alone is no cause for shame
Sometimes the right person just never came
It’s not a failure or flaw it's not a crack in the frame,
Just a life unfolding at its own pace

Though frightened by the thought,
But what do you expect when you yourself have brought
A life where the cracks are easier to see than the whole
That if I’ve let myself be caught,
What if I grow into someone I no longer know
But perhaps the cracks bring light,
A fragile hope that cuts through nights

It seems like all the years are wasted, but who is there to blame
Hope is a thing that just makes me feel like ache
What is there to be hopeful of when all I see is pain
And I’d leave, if what was waiting for me wasn’t flames

And it’s all just in my chest
A disease that forbids me from going to rest
Lord, forgive me for where I’ve strayed,
If I’m still in your grace, let my soul not fade
You’re the only one who knows my path
I’m here by your will, not by chance or wrath
Just don’t take my eyes from my head too soon
Let me see the sun, even in this darkened room.

A is for Abigail, who shared with you a kindergarten trauma and
then forgot who you were in eighth grade, like Belinda, who
left without a word one sunday morning after mass, C is
Catalina, your best friend’s ex-best friend, who went
with you to Daana’s book launch in texas, and
Enrique, who you planned to room with in college but you hear from friends
crashed his car into a tree and joined the saints, but Flores had
another kid and his man bun is
slicker than ever and Gumaro, who you helped teach
english in fourth grade is still
hitting the gym beside Hiris, even as she
works at la perla full time and overtime, beside Isabella who
no white girl would talk to in middle school because they said she
smelled like dirt, or Juliana, punching
numbers into a cash register at the dollar general thinking
of falling in love with Kruz who made a
perfect vanilla cupcake candle in home ec but couldn’t
cook steak to save his life.  
Lucio remembers kissing you on the mouth in the church
nursery but he is now engaged to a white girl you’ve
never met, and he remembers a particular
messy Maria who would draw like her life
depended on it, and a Nadia who would cry in english 11
because her parents couldn’t help her with the homework
but still kiss him after her soccer games, who no longer
bothers to call Olivia, even though they were teammates for
a decade and now she works at her own sports shop with
a daughter who could have gone pro if only.
Profe, who was a migrant “helper” at your elementary school,
laughs at it all, remembering yelling at parents in spanglish,
although you heard her husband yelling at her on the phone at lunch,
laughing when Quito broke one of the chairs that the school bought with
its 4 million dollar bond that drained money and morale, who went
out with Romani and started a band in seventh grade that took
longer than usual to fizzle out, and the bullying stopped for a while, though
Sergio would never forget how it felt to bend down for hours with
bad black bruises up his back, wouldn’t ever stop
reliving every labored breath spent both here and there.  
And Thalia couldn’t even make a living, recalling almost
forgotten days of swingsets and slurping
pelon pelo rico tamarindo under the orange tube slide.  
Her ex-husband Umberto everybody but the feds
forgot about, and V is for Victor, the high school goalie who had to quit because he
strained his wrists in the fields, like Wanita, who is trying to raise
money for her second hip replacement, like father Xavier, who carves statues of
woodland creatures for the children he could never have, and
Yesenia, who sewed and sewed until her fingers curled and her
forehead wrinkled beyond repair, and she tells you that Zaida, who made the
best tamales in town, is now gone to the saints, and no longer
fears anything, even the government and their obsession with
small white slips of paper.

So much in a name, in a hyphen, in a tilde, but no, it
should be under V—“virgulilla,” and their names should be
written in your address book but instead
they’re in a list at some office in
the States underneath “undocumented” and “illegal.”

The view from
between your legs,
with my glistening
face in the soft
lamplight is
more than
sublime.

The trust
is thick,
and
sweet.

Your happy
moans are like a
symphony from
Mozart as I wait
for the
grand finish.
dun dun dun dun dun dun dun
dun dun dun dun dun
Dun Dun

DUN

You pull me inward,
and I smell
Paradise.
Sticky faced
ambrosia.