By four o’clock your apartment is blanketed
in warm honey. You lay down for a siesta
not because you’re tired, but because she is from
red earth, olive groves and orange blossoms
because she asks you with her eyes until
you give in, because half the city is sleeping
because you know what she tells you is true—
these are the most precious hours of the afternoon.
One whir of the fan and she is gone, lost
in a dream where she sighs, reaches for you
buries her face in your hair, murmurs. Her hand
on your thigh twitches and flutters, fingers
tracing little circles on your skin. Blush blooms
through your hips. She has flung her other arm
across your ribs and you wonder: if you touch the tip
of your tongue to one of the freckles sprinkled across her cheeks,
will she taste like cinnamon? Light
sifts in through the persianas as the birds sing out
the hours. Children in the patio below kick a ball
against the wall, shriek, argue, make amends
she sleeps, her hair is silk spread across the pillow
in amber and mahogany. Your body
hums, her eyes dance beneath their lids, and you listen
for her breath, while holding your own. Church bells call
to each other throughout the city and you know the sky
above the river Guadalquivir is turning persimmon to
magenta to deep purple. The bar downstairs is lazily
opening for the evening. Nine time zones away
your family is having breakfast. Maybe it is raining
or it’s a rare, clear day where the sun
has already warmed the morning, so your father is playing
guitar on the back porch, while your mother
sings from the kitchen. The calendar on the refrigerator
counts the months you’ve been gone, and you—
you are wrapped around her, you are vibrating, your bones
growing, and then, as if you were made of water
she reaches straight through your sternum, into your chest
cradles in her palms the pulsing of your heart
holds you in the stillness as the walls begin to melt, the fan
taking turn after turn after turn after turn after turn.