I carry this affection like a too-large clock ticking inside a small room, an urgency that rattles the windows and keeps the neighbors awake. It is a heavy, hurried thing, this love of mine.

And yet, when I sit to trap it in a melody for you, the ink turns shy. I look at the staff and the scales, and I realize I cannot compose a single note that wouldn’t make the nightingale tilt its head in pity. My verses are merely sparrows hopping on a cold sidewalk, while your grace demands a sky I do not own.

It is a quiet epiphany, really:

“We are told that love moves mountains, but we forget that it often trips over a simple pebble of syntax.”

This is how I know that affection does not conquer all. It cannot buy the moon’s silence, nor can it steal the throat of a bird. It can only stand here, breathless and empty-handed, offering you this: a song that failed to be a masterpiece, but succeeded in being entirely yours.

©️Beatriz Esmer