her, there is no direction.
Nothing
sweet & succulent
like ripe mamey, warm
from the summer heat.
A man who cannot
light his own fire
is doomed
to reside in only dark
& cold places.
All around you,
the sky is warming
the asphalt; the air is alive.
Paloma
Say something.
José Armando
You scare me
when you let yourself
feel the friction
of open space,
feel the weight
of too much
of nothing,
of
who
what
why
when.
It all
hangs heavy
on you,
drags you down.
You scare me
—but I am still here.
Paloma
Every night, the pills
stick in my throat and
work my gag reflex;
I can feel my epiglottis
shift when I swallow.
You watch me
like I’m somebody
who needs watching
& I don’t feel beautiful
when I’m pinned
& wriggling
under the microscope
of your gaze.
Instead of medication,
I want sunshine
& birdsongs
—the kind of laughter
that begins in my chest
& tumbles
out & across
my frame like waves
lapping at the shore of a beach.
With or without you
I’m a shadow
woman, a charcoal sketch:
the sky gray,
the earth black,
the trees laced together
by a meshwork of dark
netting. Alone,
even when surrounded.
José Armando
I don’t want
to let you go.
When you’re furious
at me for no good
reason, recalibrating
a new set of imagined
threats,
I want to keep you
close to me
& hold your cheeks.
So many times
you’ve worried
me, I’ve found you
with deep grooves
carved under
your eyes,
your body flat against
the kitchen floor, as if
begging
it for the mercy
of an embrace.
You pine for solitude,
but you have never
been as alone
as when you walk away
from me.
You’ve left me
a dozen times, & still
come back
for nights
when we walk
beside the moonlit
lake. In the morning,
we watch the sky
turn orange
& azaleas seize
the sunlight.
The late
acacia has tossed
its pollen.
In a few months,
outside the North Hialeah
Baptist Church,
the black sapotes
will be bleeding.
I want to taste
sun-ripened fruit
with you.
If you ever say
you don’t believe
in my love:
I’ll stretch my arms.
As your muscles
tense against mine—
I will hold you.
From now on, each
time you threaten
to go—far, far away,
never to come back
—I’ll pull you close
& allay all your old,
fierce fears,
your deep-rooted
& still-gestating worries.
I waited
for someone
my whole life;
then here you are.
I found you.
I want to see you,
hear you,
smell you,
hold you,
in this space
that belongs
to no one really
—a space of consistent
fluctuation,
a no-man’s land
of intimacy.
When you are happy,
it is like the sky
has a new name
that we share.
Let me love you
with a love
so