Corazón

III.
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 asked myself how many times have I done this? and I realized I had lost count. I am a woman who insists on loving love, who always finds a way back to herself, back to being whole.

all I am is mirrors / another name for this is poet

the grief I left everywhere

this is what I know of love
the sweet mouthful
a messy thing
dissolving
in my hands
on my tongue
filling everything

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

every man I have loved does not know my country / has not been awakened by the roosters’ crow / does not know the swell of grass and dirt beneath June thunderstorms / does not smell burning wood and think of home

my heart belonged to the ocean / before it found my body

I was afraid of everything / except the poems / they’ve always been here

the summers I wore my adolescence like a yoke / my heart as heavy as clay