My bilingual poems are the fruit of a journey into learning and loving the Portuguese language. They are conceived in English and crafted to be read in Portuguese. Yet the versions are not strict translations of one another. The writing process begins with the conception of the poems in English, as I develop the essence, ideas, and emotions to be expressed. Using every tool at my disposal—dictionaries, translators, what I have learned in Portuguese language class—the English and Portuguese versions are crafted together simultaneously, line by line, back and forth through trial and error, in a dance of words that intertwine like two distinct bodies searching for harmony with one another, each influencing the other's content, movement and rhythm.