I can say "te quiero" with the same unattatchment with which
I can say good night to a cashier at a desolate convenience store
or sorry to a stranger who I bumped in the street.
My throat can spit out those two words as easily and as quickly
as a tennis ball machine launching green spheres into the air.
My hand can trace the syllables with the automacy of a banker
stamping numbers on a pile of documents.

I can say te quiero without knowing your name,
I can say te quiero without thinking twice about whether you can say it
back to me.
We give out te quieros like dealers give out cards at casinos,
we begin the night with a te quiero,
and go to bed knowing that te quiero
won't be enough to keep us warm through our sleep.
We know te quiero isn't a promise, it may not even be a greeting.
It is nothing but these words
exchanged between strangers that carry the sound of an "I love you"
but are detached from the meaning,
blown away by the wind of one's own breath.

I'm not afraid of te quiero. I see te quieros falling out of people's mouths
like rain on sidewalks, evaporating under the sun,
crawling into the cracks of the pavement.
I'm afraid of te amos.
I'm afraid of the way it forms in my lungs and climb up my throat,
like fingers going up on a piano scale.
I'm afraid of the pause between the two words,
The way my voice trembles, wondering if it can make the jump
between the "te" and the "amo", scared of falling into the void
that fills the space in the middle.

Te amo isn't a phrase that you keep at the tip of your tongue,
it is a phrase that you trap in your ribcage
and only use when you can feel it trying to escape,
when it hits against your chest repeatedly.
I am not wasteful with te amos,
I feel the meaning of te amo at the bottom of my throat,
I feel how it tugs on my vocal chords.
Te quieros can float past me, come and go in and out my ears,
but I can count the te amos I've said on my fingertips,
I can feel how they scratched my tongue as I rolled them out my lips.