flightless bird, american mouth

i’ve been seeing someone here in Nica named Ghasem. he’s Iranian and we met each other in our level one Spanish class at the Universidad Centroamericana. he speaks Farsi, a little Spanish, and not a word of English. talking with each other is exhausting because Spanish is so new for both of us, and we have to work so hard to communicate with words. we laugh all the time, make lots of mistakes, find ourselves in huge misunderstandings and an occasional outburst in our native languages. we spend forever on explaining one thing, and that we like each other continues to be a good incentive for us to practice more.

yesterday after class, we sat in a garden on campus and talked for about an hour. there was a huge flowering bush in front of us, and while we were talking, i watched a hummingbird hover over the same dark-colored flower for a long time—maybe four or five minutes. the bird was flapping its wings so fast, perched on nothing but air. it was breathless, but resting.

we held hands on the bench and talked. i teared up while i was talking, and he found enough Spanish words to say you have some crying in your eyes. i laughed and flapped around to try to respond. and then i saw some crying in his eyes too and realized i could stop working hard for more words. and so we sat quietly without words, and watched the hummingbird and the flower. and i thought, of course we are working so hard to be in the face of just a little beauty, of course we’re using these words like wings to hold us up, of course we can take all the time we want to hover here, to perch on almost nothing in common but some crying in our eyes.

it’s so sweet to go slow, to pick around at the same sweet flower, to look at every side of its beauty. i am so full of breath for that kind of flight; i am so breathless.