I sit on a bench outside my cottage,
October’s last day sparks
as if to say, “match this,”
and I can with thousand days
at another cottage facing my sea’s
impossible blues diluted or darken
depending on season and hour.

A song flies over my head and I catch it
with dendrites of memories and clouds of nostalgia,
a childhood woven with threads of photographs,
feet in the water, a few crabs inside a pail,
a blazing line of color behind my back,
waves I tried to capture to my dismay
as they dissolved as the bubbles they were.

Adolescent walkers cross the view of the horizon,
their outlines, cut outs of darkness, avoid sea urchins
looking down through crimson sunsets, spumous surf,
evening light modestly thins itself out to compensate
its extravagant beauty rolling in front of my eyes
as ping pong balls hitting the floor. I inhale the aromas
of iodine and orange blossoms that nourished me

I write a love letter every day
to us strolling the Mediterranean shore,
counting constellations between kisses,
a full moon admiring herself in water,
your shadow entering the port of my arms,
this hope that, like Odysseus, you’ll return
keeps me alive, while it has aged me twenty years.

Born and raised in Spain, Alicia Viguer-Espert lives in Los Angeles. Her chapbooks To Hold a Hummingbird and Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea concentrate on nature, identity, language, home, and soul. Her work has been published national and internationally and included in the Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” one of Ten Poets to Watch on 2018, by Spectrum. Alicia is a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart nominee.