The Acentos Review

The Other Side of Midnight

Scars pink & fleshy like lips
so I would kiss them.
I was like a bird with a seed in its beak;
the scars, shaped like almonds,
became the only things that accepted my mouth.
 

Your skin like ground coffee beans &
your touch like powder blown in the wind.
The heat would cut away at our clothes;
exposed shoulders & thighs,
my skin like the dirt between your toes.
 

The barbed wire fences between our houses
would cut into our arms & legs & back,
no matter if you went under or over
you got caught & I got caught
& that's how we got to this place.
 

There was something there, in the patches of life
between the stitching of the sun & moon.
The world of our fleshy basins;
we devoured each other
like descendants of thunder & lightning & earth.
 

You would wash my back & I would scrub your feet;
the blood mixing with dirt.
Then we would eat coconut from a neighbor's yard;
the shells course like the hair on our pelvises.
That was then & I don't know how much of you is left.
 

I remember Sunday mornings
when we would climb the tree in your yard, before falling, before the scars,
& I’m a child again; a child again before then & now
with your false lips & my beak & my tongue reaching like a flower,
I find myself rearranging furniture in a burning building
 

& I could smell your skin. 
There's a word at the end of my tongue like a broken promise
& when I think of you your eyes are closed,
not as if sleeping but like you were in the middle of a blink.
Some nights I test myself to see if I still remember your number;
 

I throw away my quarters & have a staring contest
with the moon until one of us loses.
I think of plantain lilies.
I hear someone say that their hosta will be coming up soon,
I imagine I hear that your hospice will be calling soon.
 

I think of breakfast back on the island,
how after the first scar we went inside
& your mother made us mangú.
As she pressed & mashed the
cooked pieces of plantain with butter & milk.
 

I couldn't help but think of you, of us,
pressed together like a stamp or an envelope.
When I left I told you I would write;
I did, with my broken Spanish & all.
I would send you the comic books I drew.
 

In them I was always the hero.
In them I would save you from the burning building.
In them I spoke perfect Spanish.
In them your eyes were open & deep.
In them I color in our scars.
 

Some nights I turn on all the lights
in my house & walk out far enough
to still see it in the distance, but enough to miss back home.
It's like I'm out at sea on a boat searching for the lighthouse.
I imagine that I can find my way back to the island,
 

or that somehow I would find you in the living room
soaking wet & wrapped in my towel.
Sometimes I have nightmares that I find you
in the living room soaking wet & wrapped in my towel
& you call me just another bird & I wake up drowning in tears.