Let
A poem
Snow fell yesterday
Where we marveled speechless as at an altar
In the barbers’ canyon
Tucked between mountains
our borrowed hillside hid a lovers cabin
You kept returning outside
to behold the views
not blighted by ostentatious homes
and I, looking up, astounded
at the violent closeness of every star at once
I let you not choose me, I let you
Leave,
I required no reasons
So clear to me was the truth
I let your leaving go
everyday—
like a dust storm
sweeping me breathless
lodging particles where my lungs pumped clean
just before
then nothing moves
no one comes
but a calm drizzle settling on surfaces and inside
this burning chest
I let your devotion
lie unreconciled
with your absence
I do not question the thousand
green eye glances —
especially those you pulled me close to see —
my face in your hands
I let the remnants
(stilted breaths, midnight tears)
roll down the hill we stayed on,
hitting stumps and sturdier trees
(in my memory they are green too)
and collect in the valley
by the piles of refuse
curated by the eccentric heir,
who intercepted us on the way to dinner
We learned at that meal
about the rarity of piñones,
a cash crop poor families
stop by the sides of highways to pick,
not realizing we had seen them,
their old pickups pulled across the shoulder
No one knows when the piñones will return
They only sprout
every seven years or so
