“Gold Left Behind, Fire Across the Sea”

I left Arévalo behind, the wheat fields breathing slow under Castilian skies, the dry wind that knew my name, my mother’s voice folded into the walls of home. The countryside held me like a quiet sea, golden, patient. and leaving it tore salt from my chest. ------- Madrid found me restless. Concrete waves, sleepless lights. I study to be a nurse here, learning the sacred art of care— how hands can heal, how devotion can be tender, how giving can also be power. I was born to nurture, to please, to make bodies feel safe and wanted. ------- Between classrooms and night trains, I dream of another shore. The sea calls me now, not the fields. And with it, Callum. ----------- English, blond as summer wheat, skin warm like sun on skin. He lives in my imagination with a dangerous smile and slow eyes. I crave the heat of his accent on my neck, the way his presence would undo me— how desire, once named, becomes fire. With him, I am no longer divided: I burn, I soften, I open. ---------- I am the girl of Castile and the woman of the sea. Rooted in land, pulled by tide. From my mother’s arms to a future I choose with my own hands— love waiting for me, hot, foreign, inevitable.