**A little more fiction to feed the soul. Would adore any feedback**

Lately you say that you are ready to pack up and leave.

You say this place has been perfect. It was exactly what you needed. You uncovered a sense of self within these four walls.

You talk and talk these days about Machu Picchu. The Rio. Bogota. And each one of your dimpled smiles serve as an illustrated example as to why we have to let some of our biggest dreams go. So That They Can Make Their Own Dreams Come True.

I wrestled with indecision over making your stay comfortable. Not too comfortable. Not so comfortable that you would never leave. Not so comfortable that you would debate on staying here with me instead of chasing them. Those dreams of yours.

The ones that resided there first.

You came to me with those shattered dreams. Emaciated Soul. And when you held them out to me I knew it was my job to fix you. Not Hold You. Or Grown Tender To You. Fix You. Fix You To Then Release You.

Some days you turn your head toward me and I can chart out your childhood, your boyhood, your manhood and my place in each one. But I  gently put my finger to your chin and nudge you to look not at me. But at the horizon. You were not made to look at me for too long. I am not the prettiest photograph in an album of sepia-toned miracles that this world is going to grant you.

When you turn toward the door these days I can already sense the intention. The difference in your turning. You are already letting the melody to my laughter, the sound of my lisp that you never told me was there, slip from your keeping. You are already leaving nicknames and secrets at the door.

How could I be so silly to believe that a memory of me could fit in your mochilla full of dreams?

If I could preserve your turning at the door, tuck it into the back of the sock drawer, I might pull it out one day and show her. “This, my love, is called forgetting,” I would tell her.

I guess I will be the smallest of your worldly experiences now. You’ll touch monuments. History. Frozen Chunks Of Time. Their surfaces will glisten with remnants of your idle tracing thumbs. Thumbs that once circled my shoulders.

And those travelers you come across. The Other Seekers. The ones who have taken the time to master the love languages but still will never be as fluent as me in the only language that is Love. The ones you swore only needed to open their mouth and let out one sweet syllable to lock you up in God’s existence for eternity. They will be the ones to receive the broken Spanish from your lips now.

I swear I would take anything from your lips. Broken or not.

And so we sit at the table and you highlight your travels for me. I grow jealous of the borders that will keep you in their arms. I grow bitter at the oceans. The rivers. The lakes. “I am a better basin for his tears,” I want to tell them. I am a better basin for your tears.

But you fold up the map and I see you smile and I know that whatever you are looking for, you are going to find it. And this is every reason to let you leave. Or watch you go. I am not so sure which one it is these days.

And I am sneaking from your half embrace lately and letting the night listen to me as I practice Spanish for you. I am learning words that you might be proud of. But intertwined with each word that I practice, each “R” that I roll, is the best lesson that my father ever disciplined to me: No Hacer Ruido. To Make No Noise.

To make no noise, even when I want to tell you that Amarillo means yellow. Corazon means heart. Permanecer means to stay. Ojos means eyes.

Eyes.

What I would give to steal Peru’s hazel eyes, the big brown Ojos of Colombia, to peek through the long lashes of Ecuador and see you feel at home. Laughing. Grinning. Stunning.

In a way that I always knew I never quite could keep captivated forever.