Barely above sea level on Lima’s coastal plains, the summer fullness of this place doesn’t favor your constant presence. And even when, for brief moments, you manage to be the only true light of the night sky, most of the locals live out their Saturday demanding every minute repay the credit of being lived. There are corners where faces yearn for the dawn, seeking the night’s joy in bottles of liquor; children burning their last energy of the day playing in the gazebo of a park where someone, lost in silent thoughts, swings slowly on a wooden swing. People passing by, people arriving, people flowing with the rhythm of the cool night, heading home or to someone’s home, their horizontal gazes fixed on the glow of streetlights.
In this place of sparse grass and cement, my gaze strays upward. Night after night, it seeks you, steadfast in its contemplation, knowing that before the year ends, you will bid farewell on one of these evenings.
I no longer argue with the tenderness I see in love; I neither delight in it nor resent it. What impresses me now is the beauty of aged couples who have woven time into the expression of their love—so different from the romantic spark in kisses born for the fleeting thrill of passion.
I wonder, searching the dense darkness of the sky, if my eyes deserve your companionship. In the quiet passage of the night, behind the clouds, luminously alone, have you declared yourself unworthy of being looked upon? I search for you, with an almost enamored constancy, and finally, finding you, glowing and full, having climbed higher than the clouds, my eyes write to you. They compose this romantic patience that hasn’t faltered until you were found so that my words may at last describe your affectionate presence, your long-awaited company.
I wonder:
Do my eyes deserve your company?
Do you deserve my gaze?
I search for you.
My eyes write to you my patience...
My words describe your presence...
Finally, starry. XD
