Bedside

Love is a bedside table off a side street in Tijuana. 
There a couple of 70-somethings find the courage to kiss beneath all that time,
and close eye.

Love is a mole burp,
and the smell of caked up salsa that sits on the corner of her lips because she doesn’t believe in napkins,
and you think its cute so you smile real small.

Love is two worms,
tangled under a dead sunflower bush in Old Mexico,
praying to God it doesn’t rain. 

Love is a Coke-a-Cola bottle cap,
and the tin-tin sound he makes walking through the door at midnight smelling like pine,
like vaquero of old. She’ll ask Tio Daniel for plyers in the morning.

Love is pneumonia,
and the tea you brewed for her two times over because you fucked up and ripped open the tea bag;
and it was the last chamomile so you had to drive to 711 in blizzard cursing your fate and the shaky hands that mom gave you.

Love is a coyote fur whirlwind,
and that’s that. 

Francis
Ciudad de México, Diciembre 2022