by Eric Gamalinda

When my friends decide 
they’ve had enough of America 
they start longing for the odor 
of fish sauce, the silky texture 
of newly cooked rice, warmer weather, 
the privilege of cursing 
in their own tongue. 

When they start talking about 
cops on the take, streets 
where you can’t walk if you’re not 
black or white, or the empty hollow 
you feel after the six o’clock news, 
I know it’s happened, 
they have packed their boxes 
with nostalgia, they have signed their names 
in pre-Hispanic script. 

And now we are talking 
in different languages, 
I can no longer tell them 
nothing is more beautiful than 
crossing east on Tappan Zee Bridge 
in the pouring rain, 
or reading Walt Whitman, 
or listening to Miles Davis 
right after the sun has set or even 
just the punctual clangor of the mailman 
who moves with the sadness 
of afternoons in Havana. 

Lately I’ve been getting 
strange letters in my box, 
postmarked on a date 
that has not yet happened, 
and I open them all 
as though they have always 
belonged to me, 
and everything I am about to say 
is already being filed 
in an office with no windows 
and a clerk who marks an x 
before my name simply because 
it is his duty to do so. 

Someday I will send everyone a card 
with nothing on it, only 
the calligraphy 
of a river, and in the back 
with invisible ink I will say: 
Forgive my happiness, 
I have betrayed you all. 

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