Cien Días

Like a new moon,
like the Madrid subway,
black like a cavity
or a student September.
Like the certainty that you don't dream of me,
black was that bar
where the damned hide
from the sunrises,
from the newspaper deliverers,
from the sun's needles,
from the love of the neighbor.
There I found her.

Like a suicidal person leaning
on the edge of the cliff,
stacking curses
on the aluminum bar.
The smoke of a thousand cigarettes trembled in her eyes
that she smoked with a guy
who had kissed her,
who left her one morning
asleep among the dunes of his bed,
who left with another one early morning.
That's how I found her.

Someone told me she had spent one hundred days
locked in that bar,
asking for a light or some clue
that would help her find
the light inside the labyrinth,
the map where it's hidden,
the sea where promises burn,
where you used to shipwreck.

One hundred days hiding from the gray
March sky and its traffic jams,
swallowing fog through her nose,
dreaming of you in the restrooms,
swearing not to survive,
sealing all exits,
searching in a sea of gin
for a beach to run aground.

She kissed a glass full
of ashes, looked at me,
gave me the smoke from her hands,
I smoked it. In return, I
told her that the city
was waiting for her,
that outside honeysuckles were raining,
that summer was approaching,
what would become of us
if she decided not to come with me,
to go out and defy
the dawn and its assassins.
That's how I spoke to her.

She smiled tired and lost,
her blue mouth opened.
She kissed the glass again,
she left and all her light
was devoured by the door of a restroom
where soulless women push you to the cliff.
It will be a hundred and one days
locked in the darkness of this bar,
I went out to the street and forgot to pay.
And I left.