Yesika Salgado

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

I preferred my pen and paper / my bare feet on concrete

the summers I wore my adolescence like a yoke / my heart as heavy as clay / love a dangling fruit I ached to eat / and you remained a little girl / laughing into a sky we call home / but know nothing of

I learned to forgive before I learned to speak

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

I say I want love
but I know it’s not true
when it comes,
what will I do
with this habit
of asking for what
I do not know how to keep?

I know love,
I learned it somewhere else
with no sun
and the windows shut
I am comfortable there
I think

I am good at loving in dark places

remember when he kissed another woman in front of me / how I looked at her body / how I wanted her too / wanted to wear her / squeeze into her

my uncles used to say they needed longer arms to hug me / they would laugh / I would too / I grew up thinking no one could hold me