She counts fifteen springs, few lies to tell,
two subjects pending from the previous year, and she has still not seen the sea.
While she awaits him on the sidewalk, the world crumbles.

He counts sixteen Augusts and a cloud he stole,
and Extremoduro’s¹ verses, flying in the room.
While he dreams her, he copies a poem that he will later call his own.

And—as every afternoon—the city stops the very instant
he goes to pick her up.
"How was school?" "You are late." "Don’t tell me off; come."

And she squeezes her folder against her chest, and in the sky
smoke sea anemones, coral antennae.
"If you wish my love, I kidnap you some day and I take you to the sea."

An afternoon like any other, he will go pick her up,
with his soul stuck in his throat, with daddy’s car.
"Board this ship, girl. This is the get-away I promised you."

I hope they are lucky, just as we dreamt it,
and the Nacional 4² takes them to paradise.
"My love, why are you crying? What’s wrong?" "I think these are tears of joy."

And right after leaving Despeñaperros³ behind, tiredness overcomes them
and the yearning to share sweats.
"I’ll stop and we go to sleep;" outside the cold with the dark night.

After a while the car is filled with mists and flights,
in infinite beaches, unending roads.
Deserted sands, a thousand sunsets that end with you.

It won’t be the light of dawn what will wake them,
nor the roaring of a great wave, it won’t be the salty smell:
a pair of picoletos⁴ shouting at them.

As the pane of dreams, on the way to the police station,
two lives have been shattered between rows and shouts.
"What were you thinking?" A cloud is unmade; a wave is broken.

And on returning to the city—where it never tastes salty,
the skin and the rain that sometimes kiss you—
they go home, they listen to howling and incessant blows.

Their old folks grounded them, time plowed their lives,
burning poems, endless roads.
Returning home a thousand sunsets that end without you.

The city still crumbled; on the sidewalk in the meantime
smoke sea anemones, coral antennae.
He is lost in the haze, she only remembers when she looks at the sea.

The doubt of being alive assaults her and she remembers a get-away,
when she didn’t know how to lie.
"My love why are you crying? What’s wrong?" "I think these are tears of joy."