Dear Prudence

Won't you come out to play

I don't like

how there's no room to stretch, though this piso is huge
how I can't even complete a day of my monthly challenges (deep breathing, no meat + no dairy diet) because I'm force-fed beef stew
how there's more cheese than pizza sauce
how I can't buy a plane ticket to Stockholm or a supplement online
how dogs shit in the middle of the sidewalk and pee on cars
how everyone smokes
how I'm weird for wanting to go on a diet to cleanse my body
how I'm weird for looking at the sun to sneeze
the second-hand smoke
how I can't find the things I need for my tiquis-miquis, picky body
how bad I want to hold my sister
how slippery the cobble stone is in flip flops
how no one follows the rules of staying on the right side of the sidewalk


but I'll miss it. I'll miss the freedom, to not strain myself to diets and to have no other choice but to be an opportunist.

We're lost in foreign words,
counting the olive pits we find on the ground.
Forget about the twins,
forget about the seven kids,
the house on a hill in Sevilla.

Blue shoulders-
I was his girl with blue shoulders,
but then he changed the channel.

I miss waking up in the middle of the night with a poem or a line, a sentence that was wholesome on its own. I miss squinting one eye and typing it in my phone, pulling the blanket over my head. I miss the leaves and the soil. It seems like its gone. It lived inside me and then packed its bags and left, fell in love in Spain and left.

Lagos

Walking back from class at night, a man sitting outside told me "que guapisima eres." I didn't say anything and thought, "shut up, liar." As I walked further down the street, a different man whispered to his friend, "ah, que guapa."

And I'm not gonna lie, I felt good.