The Poet | La Poeta
"A celebrated poet falls for the woman who translates her work, finding new meaning in both language and love"
The Poet
La Poeta
My poetry was famous. I was not.
"Your translator is here," my assistant said.
"Tell her my Spanish is perfectly good."
"She's translating your Spanish into English. For the American edition."
Her name was Lucía, and she read my work like she was decoding my soul.
"This word," she said, pointing. "'Ansia.' It's not quite 'longing' and not quite 'craving.' What were you feeling?"
"Both. Neither. Something in between."
"Then I need a word that doesn't exist."
"Welcome to translation."
We worked together for weeks—parsing meaning, debating nuance, arguing about whether feeling could ever truly cross from one language to another.
"You understand my work better than I do," I admitted.
"I understand your words. You understand your heart."
"What if they're the same?"
"Then I understand both."
She wrote notes in the margins of my manuscripts. Not just translations—observations. What each poem made her feel. Where she cried. Where she wanted to.
"These are intimate," I said.
"Your poetry is intimate. I'm just responding."
"No one has ever responded like this."
I kissed her over a draft of my most personal poem—the one about wanting someone you can't name.
"Was this about me?" she asked.
"It was about someone I hadn't met yet. But now I know her face."
"That's very poetic."
"It's what I do."
Loving Lucía was like writing in a new language. Familiar rhythms, unexpected words, meanings that emerged only after careful reading.
"Write me a poem," she requested.
"I write poems about feelings, not people."
"I am a feeling now."
I wrote her a collection. Forty poems, each one about a different moment: our first argument, our first night, the way she translated "te quiero" as "I need you" instead of "I want you" because she said it was more honest.
"This is my love letter," I said, handing her the manuscript.
"Do I translate it?"
"You already have. Into reality."
The book was published in both languages, side by side. Critics called it groundbreaking. Readers called it romantic.
"To words," we toasted at the launch.
"To the woman who makes mine mean more," I added.
La poeta—where language is love, and translation is just another word for understanding.