Читать книгу Happy, Okay? - M.J. Fievre - Страница 19

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 strong it will

propel you

out of your body.