SLOAN HAMPTON

If you are not here, who will claim the love I reserved for you? Who will wipe the tears that flow for you? Who will hear the heart that beats for you? With you gone, who will remember with me? Who will remind me I’m not alone? 

These are the questions I imagine the mourning dove in Tomás Méndez’s 1954 song Cucurrucucú Paloma asks itself. 

They say every night, he would cry / they say he doesn’t eat; he only drinks / they say that heaven would shake to hear him cry / he would die crying / like I am / I cried, I moaned / ‘Cause I miss you / I need you / Miss you