Corazón

mi corazón, cielito lindo, tesoro mío, mi amor, mi vida, mi alma. — how beautiful it is to be loved in Spanish.

you love someone for a long time so long you don’t remember not loving them so long the years accordion into each other and within the folds, all the times you didn’t get it right so you let them go they come back (or you call them back) you swear it’ll be different but it isn’t you still love them each failure hurts you think, maybe you can be friends but that too is a sharp pain you don’t want them in your life you don’t want to live without them another year goes by this way turning hope into your only bread and water maybe you’ll figure it out maybe someone new will make you both forget maybe the world will end and set you free

I needed to find your God and ask him to forgive me for trying to love anyone else before you

I say I want love but I know it’s not true when it comes, what will I do with this habit of asking for what I do not know how to keep?

I learned to forgive before I learned to speak / to turn palms upward to God and my lover / to let a man ruin me with his love / to call the ruins sacred / to uproot everything and call the new place mine / to name the nostalgia something sweet / a ripened fruit growing out of a dying tree

I am good at this / turning heart ache into a party

tonight I'll dance I'll be alive and ain't that worth the party?

I come from women who fend for themselves the blade is our friend and you? you are a weed I know how to slice you out of me

and if he loves you, what is next?