Sixty. One a.m.


Herida de Amor

Ah, it's been a long time, no? the waiter says.
Yes, I say, unsure. I am the only customer.
I ask for a Budweiser. You are always doing that,
he says, Here you should drink Mexican beer.

He gestures to a poster on the wall.
A woman in a dress patterned with small bright birds,
dances and holds a bottle of Pacifico,
the birds swirling around her.

OK, I nod. I have never been in this restaurant.
I've never seen this man who greets me.
There's the last squint of daylight
through the window. A blurred sun
burns down behind the hills.

He brings the Mexican beer, takes my order,
and sits at the table.
Do you remember the watch I used to wear? he says.
No, I say. He rolls up his sleeve,
revealing the pale outline on his brown skin
where the watch used to be.
I gave it to a woman, he says,
and now I am sad
because the watch is gone and so is she.

With his fingertips he flicks
some specks of salt from the checkered cloth.
He lowers his head, speaking softly,
Now I have all this time to think of her
and no watch.

He gets up and puts a quarter in the jukebox.
The song sung in Spanish
is a song of pain.
I hear him in the kitchen singing,
Herida de amor.

I listen and remember.
Although the woman I'm thinking of
never wore a design of birds,
I see her coming to me
in just such a dress.

I hear the sigh,
the sound the dress makes
when it slips off her body
and she steps out of it

and all those bright birds flutter down,
huddle together on the floor.
The waiter brings my order.
He looks out the window,
the feminine outline of the silhouetted hills.
It is always darkest at night, he says
without irony. And I know
what he means, know he is right.

He's not talking about the night,
but the second night, the dark
within the dark when I wake and wonder,
Where did she go?

And I am left to imagine a migration
of beautiful birds and women.
The women dancing, the birds flying around them
down in Mexico.

-- Gary Short