[written 7.16.08]
para carlito
I remember when I first saw you
I saw only your dark eyes
With all of my soul,
And I was falling.
I fell in love at first sight,
And as you spoke about home
And Havana
And a family more broken than the old monitor you won’t let go of,
It almost seemed rational.
I remember when you first left me
Only a few hours later,
As I dropped you at your house
And watched you shut
The door.
And the hole in my heart,
And the fear in my gut,
That I wouldn’t find you again since I’d never seen you before
And there were only a few months left.
I remember when I first called you
After finding your number
And holding it for days
Knowing that I was so close to finding but always
Missing you.
And I asked you in
And I brought you to the Family
The friends whom I had cooked and cleaned after for months and years already,
And you insisted on doing dishes.
I remember the first time we talked in your driveway
Until longer than I should have stayed out
As I argued with you about prom
And my self-image
And being an intelligent girl,
And home.
And how I sat next to you in my car for hours
Only a few feet from you, and felt my heart helplessly trying not to hope that you might just once
See me as something more.
I remember when I called all my friends
After I had first met you,
And told them, only half-jokingly,
That I had met the love of my life,
And they had to see his eyes.
And I remember the constant
Fighting
Within,
As my experience was trying so hard to dig its heels in and hold on to the rope burning in hand,
And drag my heart back up,
But my heart had already slipped off the cliff.
I remember driving late at night,
Listening through the stereo to your ipod,
As you whispered into my ear
In the accent that I alone had no trouble understanding,
Translating the Spanish love songs
You played
That I knew you would never mean
For me.
I remember walking until I had blisters
On Bayshore
At midnight,
Discussing the merits of recording American Beauty,
Capturing it or experiencing it
To the most.
And I remember loving your mother
And your brother
And hating that you hated the American life
And giving so much of myself into you, hoping that you might finally take the leap to be happy-
Because then,
You might love me.
And I remember as I left you there
With the rest of my memories
of unrequited love,
And found myself so free,
I hated you
For letting me love you
And never letting my love change your life.
But the hate died into apathy, and it took weeks then months for us to call each other back,
And it was all over.
But we were never meant to be- we both had our prior loves.
I loved my God and joy and love
and beauty,
And though you told me I was beautiful,
And I wanted so much to believe,
I could never compete with your bitter melancholy,
Because you had left your heart
In Cuba.
.jpg)
