From where the palm tree grows.

Dear Cuba,

I found you.

It took some time, but you came. We had caught glimpses of you before. You were the children playing baseball in a grass lot with a massive visage of Che keeping watch. I heard your symphony sung by birds in the Parque Central; then a six piece band playing "El Cuarto de Tula", three singers coalescing into one voice. Yours.

On our first day here, you were a storm cloud in the Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón . A four minute onslaught of pounding rain, to warn us, a display of what our week could be like if you wanted it to be. You weren't the constant unexpected sunshine that followed for the rest of the trip though. That was beautiful but inescapable, sometimes sweltering. You were that fleeting flirtation in the waning afternoon.

Dear Cuba. I saw you this morning. The procession of uniformed children tossing flowers in the river, out to sea to honor Camilo Cienfuegos. But you weren't the children; you were the many-varied petals. You were what prompted smiles to bloom on their faces. And because their innocent elation was infectious, to spread on mine.

A week chasing you left me with a blister on the ball of my foot that I felt when I rested, paused in my pursuit of you. I looked at it for the first time this morning and saw it was a perfectly-formed crimson heart. You wanted to remind me that love must involve some pain, a struggle. That only someone you love so deeply can reach you in that way. But the pain is our hurdle; it fades. Tested and torn muscles rebuild stronger. Proven capable of bearing the greater weight of our future.

Dear Cuba. You were the woman that welcomed me and my friend into her family's home, and you were her fourteen-year-old cousin there. You asserted your strength, defiance, sovereignty, determination, independence, as others around acquiesced, settled, sold themselves. But you were also that girl's potential. The belief that the next generation that idolizes you will build on all of those virtues. Will manage to reach farther still.

But tonight I saw you clearest, and tonight I understood. You started with a four piece band; three guitars and percussion on an apple box. Not the one of the farmer, but of the filmmaker. The percussionist leaned back with casual artistry. I was impressed; taken aback. "Viva Stevie Wonder" was scribbled on the walls of the courtyard, the white temporal chalk on dark rojo.

You were in the third row as the bands made the air around us tremble. You had a string of flowers falling from your hair. I couldn't help but sneak looks at your dimples, your singing along to songs I'd never dreamed. I didn't walk over to talk to you. Not because I was nervous, but because I couldn't express myself with the passion that I wanted. Not a passion that I felt for you in that instant, but that I felt was required for this country. Something my second semester Spanish never covered.

Dear Cuba. I could have kept talking to the Swiss girls. They were beautiful, but had no passion. They assessed attraction by arithmetic, reduced conversation to a quantity and I needed, need, passion on instinct. I preferred to keep vigil to the night around me, to join in the chorus with those around. With you. The words a mystery but the emotion an impossible clarity.

Dear Cuba. Years of longing and months of planning to come meet you are forever passed. In your history, you were mythology become reality. And now that we've met, you're myth turned flesh, and back again to legend. My lesson that you come from dreams, and to dream you shall return.

Dear Cuba.

We fell in love tonight. I hope you remember in the morning.



(originally written October 30, 2010)