TO THE GUANACOS AT THE SYRACUSE ZOO

I’m sorry I would’ve skipped past your exhibit

on my quest for the elephants, if not

for my boyfriend’s shouting, Look, llamas!

I’m sorry I then called out Llamas! twice,

three times, in the typical zoo attendee’s

Iloveyou! shriek, before noticing your sign:

not llamas but their close relatives, guanacos.

I’m sorry my boyfriend kept calling you

guaca-moles & I’m sorry I found that funny.

I’m sorry, guanacos, for all four of you on display,

your little slice of Syracuse hill looked nothing

like the lush Patagonian plains or grand

Atacama desert lands pictured in your bio.

I’m sorry you were not llama-famous, & stuck

in an underfunded zoo in Upstate New York.

After reading more of your bio, I’m sorry your lives

in the wild weren’t so grand either. Your more

hospitable habitats were being destroyed, you

were hunted by fox, puma, mountain lion, & man,

inventive man who used, I’m sorry, your thick

neck skin to make shoes. I’m sorry that

even though it was a stupid-hot day, you

could not demonstrate your most adorable

survival technique—licking the dew

off cacti—as there were no cacti around.

& yet it’s true, I watched you, & I’m sorry for

staring as I did, it’s just that you somehow

managed to look at once elegant

& weary, I mean each of you sitting so still

with your legs tucked beneath your body,

& then your sleepy eyes. I mean,

the four of you were like a quartet of elderly

duchesses. (I’m sorry, later I looked you up

on the zoo website & found out you were all

males.) I’m sorry, I meant for this to be

an ode, a love letter, & it is, I swear,

but the ways you’d been treated—I knew I

couldn’t, on top of all that, lie to you. I didn’t

intend to meet you & you yourselves were

probably hoping for better. But isn’t this

how it happens? Aren’t all great

love stories, at their core,

great mistakes?