My love was not born in a quiet cradle, but in a land of deep mystery, where the rivers flow like midnight tresses uncurling toward the sea. Look at this skin! It is a canvas painted by the forest and the golden Eastern light, stained with the redwood dye of history, woven with the strength of a thousand suns. It is a skin that knows the wind and the rain, a testament to a lineage that refused to be broken.

This beauty? It is not my own. It is a legacy of toil passed down from my mother’s calloused, holy hands. I hear her still in the music of the marketplace—the glass bangles singing a silver melody as she hoists the baskets of life. With a grace that would make the saints weep, she carried the weight of the world, and in doing so, she planted the seeds of my soul in the earth’s rich, dark soil.

The Pulse of the Land

Oh, this land! It holds the moon and the sun like two lovers who refuse to part. Here, the fruits are so sweet they sting the tongue, and the eyes of the people are kind and clear, reflecting a truth older than the cathedrals. There is a rhythm here, a pure and ancient pulse. Can you hear it? It is the music of the drums beating in my blood, the grand, cascading roar of the rivers spilling their secrets into the Atlantic.

It is a call of moonlight, silver and sharp, beckoning the heart to finally be free.

The Return

This love, this origin, it runs deeper than the roots of the oldest cacao tree. It is a longing that aches in the marrow—a hunger for that place where the spirit feels whole. In the heat and the dust, in the laughter and the struggle of this country, I have found my true art. For it is here, amidst the rhythm and the redwood stain, where my love and my roots truly start.

©️ Beatriz Esmer