Imagine us at a tapas bar, the orange lamplight warm,
the bar so crowded with strangers our chairs bump.
We sip tempranillo in Madrid. Or a malbec in Argentina.
You know, they say Buenos Aires is the Europe of South America.
To practice, let me tango to the recesses of your apartment.
I promise I’ll change out of my quarantine leggings.
We’ll climb Machu Picchu,
and fly to drink beer in a Munich beer garden.
We can peruse the galleries of the Louvre
to exclaim we need a week when we only have a day.
It will be like a novel where we lounge in the French Riviera
with sidecars. The ceiling will be a white confection,
and the green light across the water a promise
we’ll never want to leave and the leaving will be painful.
When I was child, I sucked on ice cubes
until they hollowed enough to crack.
I’m waiting for this moment to melt,
my hand growing colder.
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Julia Hands is a writer and editor out of Seattle. She is the current editor-in-chief at Crab Creek Review and has fiction and poetry published or forthcoming from publications such as Cream City Review, The Evansville Review, and Aquifer: The Florida Review Online.