Caridad Moro-Gronlier


Elizabeth and I Negotiate


over what we can afford
once we get to Charleston,
the Holy City, where churches
outnumber everything, but bars—
our favorite one on Queen St.
where I kissed her on New Year's
in 2015, insisting she shouldn’t worry,
because we had a right to feel safe
even in the South. I felt entitled
to splurge on a horse-drawn carriage
where we cuddled in full sight,
got us a King-sized bed and 30-dollar
shrimp and grits I paid for with cash
I earned after withholding tax,
like the couples to our left
and our right. We dropped a bundle
because after years spent hiding
we knew there were worse things
to spend than money, like the time
we could never get back.

But this poem is not about that.

Today we gauge the exact amount
of PDA we can afford. We take
kissing off the table, tell each other
it’s a turn-on to wait until we get
inside. We feel brave
when we allow ourselves the risk
of holding hands in the Holy City,
where we are now relearning
how to be afraid.

Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the author of Tortillera (Texas Review Press 2021), winner of The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series, an Eric Hoffer Book Award Honorable Mention, a First Horizon Award Finalist, and an International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention. She is also the author of the chapbook Visionware (Finishing Line Press 2009). She is a Contributing Editor for Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault (Beacon Press, 2020) and Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day, an online daily poetry journal for women-identifying poets. Her recent work can be found at America’s Best Poetry Blog, Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology, Poesia De Protesta, Split This Rock, Limp Wrist Magazine, and others. She resides in Miami, Florida with her family.

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