I shift toward you in bed,
aware of the storm standing
outside to collect the dawn.
I grab fistfuls of your skin,
bury my burden in your black hair.
You’re full of eyes and shadows
from the land my mother still calls home.
When you kiss me, the distance peels
her fingers from the south,
shoves hemispheres into my mouth.
I wonder what has become of the Andes
where snow falls like shreds of truth
over the ones who’ve disappeared.
Your father once drove mules
through those fields of light
and carried the weight of vegetable sap
and dirt smeared into his corduroy pants.
You speak to me
and your Spanish ripples above my flesh.
So much is sacred–
the cells of dreams,
the expanse of geography,
the stories of our dead that bind us.
I feel myself rising from the harvest
of old leather and broken headstones,
like a crescent moon
left unattended by the wind,
and when I close my eyes,
you release me.