Te echo de menos, Amor de Verano—
Even if I struggle to speak of three days
We spent in love strolling across
Summer afternoons in Italy and France
In t-shirts and gym shorts, still I
Whisper your name beneath blankets
Of strangers. We lay on the grass behind
Gardens of roses and flowers of metal,
recounting rude and abstract birds, and
Only now on the opposite side
Of this lake, I see how far apart
We are. To keep myself from giving
In to shallow odes or sonnets, I sing
Of Santiago and nights downtown over
Cobblestone roads, roughed up and unpredictable
In length and meter. Choosing to speak
Of one-way streets like cartographers
Instead of dancing down sidewalks
The way everyday lovers would.
Let me quietly sing to a city in bloom
Under a tree while the sky grows pale
And the white grass bows beneath us.
Y yo a tí, también. Just as you arrived,
you left; I hear these words in
Your imagined voice. I remember it all—
In a language that wrestles my tongue
Into knots like the violent touching of mouths
When something foreign invades
The heart like army, implodes with the
Force of the Argentine sun, dries
Up my throat and pins me down to
The earth, that which now makes me feel
Beloved and nauseated,
Hidden and celebrated.
Beneath my shirt, your handprint— a ghost,
A souvenir of words that we never spoke.
I cannot avoid how I feel for you,
Amor de Verano, even if calling
You by this name fails to capture
How I’ve felt about the past three days;
Still, I gaze at your picture affixed
To the final page of my passport.
