of Harlem, we dined in Havana for a night. 

The adults sipped mojitos, drowning in mint and lime.

We watched ice float into a yellow chandelier. 

I licked passion fruit juice off my lips, 

the sticky sweetness stuck in my swallow, the steaming 

ropa vieja simmering on the silver plate, 

my teeth tearing the tender flesh 

while practicing Crayola penmanship on white cloth. 

Empty glasses littered the table. 

Waiting in line for the bathroom, my aunt laughed 

with a businessman. I never saw her

that way before. Unseen beneath my feet, 

the subway rumbled. She pulled her chair back,

wringing out her wet hands and then I teased her 

for reaching twenty-seven and never knowing love. 

She brushed me away: 

 

At least I’ve never known heartbreak. 

 

My aunt has now swapped 

New York for San Francisco. Her loopy handwriting spells out: 

“West Coast, Best Coast!” with a smiley face in blue ink. 

I keep her letters in my denim pocket. 

In DuPont Circle I watch 

two girls from a Degas painting dance 

on a fountain’s edge. They ebb and flow 

like two egrets, heart-shaped necks twisting together. 

They kiss and kiss long after the sun has retired to bed. 

Love-drunk moonlight stumbles onto silk dresses. 

Perching on a wooden bench, I pull out her latest letter, 

still in its crisp cream envelope. Skimming a nail under the seal, 

I unfold the card cluttered with constellations. 

Scrawled in tiny script at the bottom, I find two 

Sharpied words: 

 

I’m gay. 

 

Between us: a rich, midnight black curtain, 

velvety and soft. Our own private planetary orbits, 

milky-way and twilight-specked galaxies lined up infinitely. 

And then her letter, a sheaf of paper 

as thin as Pluto’s atmosphere, raised the thick, 

impenetrable curtain. 

It hangs above us in the thin air. 

 

I see you, on the other side. 

Exposed. Approaching center stage

My right hand rises.

I see you, on the other side.

Raise your hand too. 

 

And our palms connect 

in a second stretched

into eternity, locking eyes. 

 

Your’s freckled with fear, 

mine pin-pricked with truth: 

 

I see you.