so many doors you wedged to find me
first sex to first love to shared home
(to left on my own)
you made me feel newly desirable and powerful.
corazón,
no longer tentative with every early creak,
i danced to your bomba drum
while, slowly, over our years
your fingers spanned my chest gripped its grooves
and
yanked my heart apart.
*
you freed me from my fairy tales.
*
i had to collect the far-flung glints of my aorta
alone. they pierced every toe, every finger.
my blood was glue for every angry shard.
*
but this, too, was a gift:
i learned that one only grieves
to the depth of one’s love.
(later i would learn that a heart
wrenching open repeatedly
is what teaches it to be strong.)
*
gil,
do you now know how to caress a lover’s soul?
are you, too, visited by our children’s ghosts?
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