Mythological Beasts

          She stripped off my shirt. Slipped free
of hers. Pressed breasts to breasts, heartbeat
to heart.

          Te quiero, she declared, siempre.
I wear this promise of permanence
like a tattoo

          whose ink didn’t take—
of a mythological beast that spans my back:
say, a griffin,

          even Ziz. What lasts, and what gets lost
in translation, in time? In every favorite picture,
she’s 31, smiling, fine

          lines rising between her brows. Furrows
by now, and by now she’s history, ancient and recent,
like the New Year’s

          resolution she made with me in mind—
or last night’s electrical storm. Lightning strobed
the bedroom

          windows, explosive thunder shook
the walls, and I wrestled with semantics, the easy
abuse of always

          when for this fleeting instant was the case.
She left off with nos vemos, never ventured
adios. Actions speak

          a different language, absence makes
the heart grow hard. This morning, doves flash
sun-varnished wings

          amid rain-thrashed trees, broken limbs
swim in puddles, and I hunch naked as the day
she left me,

          under the sun that burns my shoulder blades
where my wings were amputated. I search for words
that have

          one meaning in her bifurcated tongue.
I mumble of real birds, wild horses, the cutting wind,
this stone

          my heart becomes. Palomas, caballos, viente.
Diamante mío: este pobre corazón.