Love Letter to the City

(para Salamanca, con todo de mi corazon. Espero que puedas escucharme.)

I wish I could tell you

just how beautiful you are.

I wish you weren't so modest with your smiles

when I say that you are beautiful

at any time of day,

that no matter what you say

I will always be in love with the way

your blood vessels go in roundabouts

but never clot with angry drivers,

how the fountains that flood from your eyes

always sing with delight,

and how your whole body is draped

with activity and industry.

You are filled with so much life,

so many morning time trucks

and evening time drunks

that twilight is just a placeholder,

something to hold the seconds together.

You grip me in your old hands

and hold me to your stone chest

and say, “da igual” - it doesn't matter.

Don't worry about fitting in,

just enjoy yourself.

Let them whistle like wolves,

let them snap at your heels -

it's the culture.

They don't bite hard, and even then,

you're kinda into that.

Let them poke fun at your everyday trips

and your social slips,

it's the culture – the greater the laugh,

the greater the love,

and the whole city has a great sense of humor!

A bird, one of your old sweaty-toothed women told me,

can't help but fall in love every time

it looks down on you -

your face peering upwards is always blushing roof-tile red

and your smiles are always building-wall white,

and your curves are jealously guarded by old stone walls

that don't exist anymore – you tell me that it's over between you two,

that now I have to ask the river for your hand in marriage,

or even just announce my intentions to every single

arms-length fish I scream and hide from,

dig my feet in between river rocks and multilingual daydreams

to ground myself in what's really there.

I ask blades of grass and bridge arches, “how do you say, 'I love you?'”

They tell me, “you don't, you just do”.

Love is not just a verb,

It's the reality that everything has to be laid bare,

so now every time I bury my naked toes in your street stone skin

and sing your praises to any cloud who will stop long enough to listen,

I beg you to listen to my midday declaration,

my midnight serenade,

to fall into my arms like a wishing star

and come true in between my trembling fingertips.

After all this time, you still make me shiver

with your exotic tongue and your excited bell-pealing laughter,

I love you for every inch of back-corner street I have not seen,

for every seedy bar that you revealed to me,

for every morning waking up within you

and still loving how you taste, that gorgeous combination of

somewhere between perfect and too good for me.

You will always be too good for me.

My heart is made from every pane of glass

littering your numerous windows,

and I want you to stare into my soul

but please don't break me.

Look at me and feel my passion,

feel my eyelashes waving at you from across the room

and begging you to come over to my half-empty lungs

and breathe me whole.

You left a hole within me,

so that whenever we are finally together again,

I don't have to tell you, “bienvenidos”,

I am able to say, “te amo”.