Montuno

remember that trot? those half-inch heels worn down to nails, pressing against

the rounded cobbles and slipping, like when you first sat at a piano and held out two fingers.

you tapped the black keys only, syncopated and sharped, hiding your weak

index finger in the emergent rhythm. years later i will retell this story so that

it was a montuno, a certain steadiness, and not merely the surprise of spilling out from a taxi

into a doorway shadowed by twigs of spring fears, so fresh as to snap before the lifting of dawn.

but that trot, that vervy step you bounced to,

tell me, wasn't it a retreat from the midday heat?

you looked out your window that day in july, and the east was a swath of smoke.

it was a small fire, a first alarm, but a house fire still engulfs a house,

and you couldn't believe how much smoke rushed to the sky,

a farewell. you threw out those shoes, left the trot to those yet to learn

how to make peace with stones too smooth to support the heavy load of want.

what i recall will be the silence in the night, that i still can recall.