Chile Within

¿Me olvidaste?
Do you remember me?

Still holding the sign
with the faded outlines

of what I couldn’t be to you?
Do you remember?

There’s hope now,
for us,

because memory grays,
and one day all we will be is sepia

in the one photo of us
taken just before or after

the Marx-cocktail quiz
you said I passed with flying colors.

That A+ was for you,
the entrance exam

into the cramped antechamber
of your heart so thick with Aztec blood

you sacrificed us both
to keep it beating.

I could take it
if our syncopated rhythms

were just one step
closer to home.

But instead I hold this sign
of my outlines

pointing us both
in the right direction,

and only my shadow
cries for you.