Bolero

Buried in an underworld tavern

we listened to a bolero

while drinking tears, goodbyes and maybes

like discolored and tasteless margaritas.

Music unfixed our faces from the skulls;

our flesh was running water.

Leaking skin, blood and muscles dripped from our seats into a puddle;

trumpets sculpted the anatomy of a rose inside your ears,

our eyes became smoke filling the ceiling’s dome.

You asked me again what I was thinking,

and that one time I wished I had an answer.

Looking at each other’s faceless, shifting expressions

there was the unbearable sharpness of our future.

And what was our destiny but that tissue ripping sound of out of tune guitars?

Eating us from the inside out,

leaving us dry, sucking us into patterns

of school girl uniforms,

as the trio continued to bounce the congas

through “el infiernito”

and the waitress from hell served more “aguardiente”

that we sipped without lips.

You carved your name on the table

offering me your wound in the shape of a tangerine,

the peels of acrid smell brought tears to our sockets,

the seeds filled wooden cracks on the floor,

and no one noticed.

There was this lady dancing with a knife stabbed on her back,

a drunk man removed his scalp and fed his brain to leaches.

The couples on the dance floor were like live rabbits inside a cloth bag,

the smell of their sweat drove me to the edge.

One of the singers drown himself in the bathtub,

the line to the restroom grew longer,

the other two kept singing.

The song was about martyrs pregnant with sorrows

and broken bottles in the head of despair.

I don’t remember the rest.

We took a picture of our bones with a cloud’s backdrop,

before we looked around

pretending that it never happened.

And then you left or I left first,

who really cares?

But years later

I still wake up with your smell.