of Harlem, we dined in Havana for a night.
Mojitos my aunt sipped, drowning in mint and lime.
We watched the ice float into the yellow chandelier.
Nine years old, I tasted passion fruit juice for the first time,
the sticky sweetness stuck in my swallow, the steaming ropa vieja 
simmering on the silver plate, my teeth tearing the tender flesh. 
Empty glasses littered the table.
Waiting in line for the bathroom, a man striked up a conversation 
with my aunt. I never saw her and a man that way before.
Her innocent laugh drifted across the restaurant and wrapped 
around my head like a warm blanket until her chair was pulled 
back and she settled in next to me. Unseen beneath our feet,
the subway rumbled. Under feeble light
we teased her for reaching twenty-seven
and never knowing love. She brushed us away: 

At least I’ve never known heartbreak. 

My aunt has now swapped out
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 back pocket,
the denim edges worn smooth.
I watch two girls from a Degas painting dance
on the 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 bench beside them, I pull out the latest letter,
still in its crisp cream envelope. Skimming a nail under the seal, 
I unfold the card patterned with constellations. 
Black hearts invade the margins. Scrawled in tiny script 
at the bottom, I find two
permanent words:

I’m gay. 

Between us is a rich, midnight black curtain,
velvety and soft. We had our own private planetary orbits, 
milky-way and twilight-specked galaxies lining up infinitely 
between us. And then her letter, a sheaf of paper
as thin as Pluto’s atmosphere, raised the thick, impenetrable curtain. 
It hangs there in the thin air.
I see you, on the other side.
Exposed. Approaching the center of the stage,
my right hand raises in disbelief.
I see you, on the other side,
raise your hand too. And our palms connect
in a second stretched into eternity, locking eyes,
her’s are freckled with fear,
mine pin-pricked with perception: 

I see you.