Desirée Alvarez

Ancients threw the masks down the cenote— the faces smashed first in little ways before the long drop, an eye or an ear broken, a mouth snapped in half. Then, lifted from the well, two thousand years later, still grinning and golden. The loose spooling of two people fast unravels—how we let go of time spent, how heat fades, how a body forgets fully what it knew. I have learned your face as you will never. The third day we met you gave me all your secrets until I held an ocean in a cradle. Now all I ask for is more.