The Leaving

Cuba is like love

Beautiful enough
to ruin people

An island of salt and longing
where everything beautiful
learns to survive
beside absence

You carry it long after leaving

Cuba is like love
because it survives on contradiction

You stand before the sea
thinking something so beautiful
should have saved everyone

And yet beauty has never been protection

Still
people return to it in their minds forever

Like first loves
Like impossible loves
Like homes that continue living inside the body
long after the body has gone elsewhere