A poet told me she wouldn’t be able to translate one of the lines from my poem: ‘I love you in this city,’ and make it sound right. She said it wouldn’t sound sincere. I didn’t tell her, the person I wrote it for didn’t think so either. I would have tried to make it sound like a joke. She wasn’t getting my jokes. Instead she wrote one of my other lines on the wall: What else would it mean to be human if not a lost thing. I could have fell for her but I didn’t. Maybe when we say love, we mean a safe place to fall apart.

— Tonight’s Cantab feature is Kundiman fellow and Write Bloody author Jason Bayani! This is from his poem “Kein/Muenchen,” published in Muzzle as part of their 30 Poets in Their 30s feature.