slowly, slowly, we implement the Fear;
the flick of a paper,
the scratchings of a pencil
the tremor of flesh and translucent bonds of tissue
that seize and choke on visions of Our Future,
My Future, and Yours;
sheet music hits the ground as I detach the breath.
Rip the piano keys from their wooden bed;
Teeth returned to teeth, and the mouth sings
bloody and bare, red on bone.
Theta dwindles to a sweep of 29 degrees;
You miss the deadline, fail the test.
My ankle twists in a pointe shoe.
I revert to a state of quiet Cuban poetry,
whispers of ‘te quiero, te quiero,
serás mi corazón’;
I smell the sea and miss a home I have never known,
Ache for it.
An island sprawls into being in the middle of an ocean
made of oil spills and 10 degree water that seeps
  up from the bottoms of my eyes;
The riots spill over into tiny planes
and I lie awake in bed, supposed years away.
I ache for a lover who never loved me back
and I run towards the comforting lull of my mother’s engine.
Precalculus fails me for the twenty sixth time,
or, rather, I fail it;
A’s, B’s, X’s over my poetry,
beautiful bullsh*t.
Holy cow, you’re beautiful.
You smile and he smiled back at you
And you wonder if life can work in this
pretty way.
Paint a photograph to perfection,
text them all back
and then keep writing love letters in Cuban,
  the only language you both know
   only too well.