…I want you to take me there anyway. take me the long way, where the trees whisper and the
hills make us lose our breath. show me your favorite flowers. I’ll tell you my favorite words.
amorcita means little love in spanish. amorcita. if there are no lights in the garden, then maybe
there is a god, an october god, a god by a name I no longer know. in spanish, there are no
tones. it is a stressed language. if there are no lights in the garden, then maybe there is
translation, transformation, in-betweeness, in-love. you told me once that you stopped feeling
like yourself. if it was a balance in temperature that you needed, maybe i was too warm for us to
reach any equilibrium. If there are no lights in the garden, I want you to take me there anyway.
under your breath, call me by the name only you know. the names our mothers call us. this
name that becomes a prayer, a native tongue, a safe landing. i loved you in summer, autumn,
winter, but we could not make it to spring. how do you say spring in spanish? can i say it in a
way that we will both understand, in a way that makes it a promise? i want to spell spring like f-
o-r-e-v-e-r. if there are no lights in the garden, i want you to take me there anyway. not
tomorrow, not when dawn breaks, not when we know the right words to say. i want to kiss you
like it’s the first time all over again. there are secrets in the seeds of these words, can’t you tell?
these secrets that take the shape of roses, of lilacs, of plum blossoms, of peonies.
Rosario Santiago (they/we) is queer Puerto Rican writer from Philadelphia. Their work has been featured in Celestite Poetry, Mag 20/20, Four Palaces Publishing, and the 2022 OutWrite D.C Festival Journal. They enjoy writing about ghosts, time-travel, and queer love.
Painting by. Emil Nolde