"The tongue continues to confess"

You are left with the ache of lost love. You'd just gotten off of the Baz Bus, after a long bus ride, after sitting on a curb in Jo'burg, after visiting the Apartheid Museum, and needed a moment to catch your breath. The bus took you back to Durban. You arrived at the backpackers' once again. New people were there. A group from Milan had arrived while you'd been traveling. A week to Jo'burg and back via the Ampitheatre in the Drakensberg Mountains and Lesotho. A friendly couple and their friend: a blond man whose beauty is so striking it's almost painful to look at him. You lock eyes and a tacit understanding is exchanged. At least it seems that something is silently understood between you, but you're never quite sure what it is. You drink wine, smoke, and talk, in broken Italian, Spanish, and English, as much as the language barrier will allow. The couple frequently leaves the two of you alone and you're never quite sure what to make of it. If only you spoke the same language! He teaches you phrases in Italian and chides you for not knowing more Spanish. His eyes seem to accuse but it's your own voice in your head: you grew up in the American Southwest, how are you not fluent in Spanish? His eyes meet yours and you know you'd have green-eyed children, if it came to that. But you look away. You only have three days left in the country. All too soon it'll be time to go home. Back to America, to your studies, and the boyfriend you've left behind.