Put me down, I think, off your shoulders; you are tired. Your body
smelling of the sun, fresh bedspreads, simple breakfast of eggs and
bread.

You should know I liked it most when you carried me from the heart
of the study to the bedroom once and over again. My ears against your skin,
your body, mine too, a sack of flour dropping

to the hardwood.

And there is the balcony that always says, Si muero, because once,
you read it, and once, it played like a small music box, your voice
in the wind,

singing, ah, ah, ah, fetching me to the shorelines and kicking the sand.

(Pausing, the tenses switching, a memory kept like that, and so I
grew too used to you: a good thing, a bad thing.) Like the you

who tied my braids, double knotted my shoelaces, refilled the
empty drawers and made it a home,
this little house.

Now there is furniture of colors I don't wear, television shows I don't watch, magazines
in languages I can't read, and food I can't swallow without water, and you, (but you,)

you who was unbearably dear to me,

you who could not watch the ocean at night for fear of forgetting
how it looked like in the day (where you, of course, loved it better)

and you
who grew sunflowers by our bedside window: you, this you, you, you, you
is enough (so put me down, come here where I am leaving

this is where I will be from now on: an atrium where there is your body,
my body, us two, your shoulders putting me down, slowly, gradually,
eventual—a shadow, then two shadows,

and yes, I do know.)