(After “Romance Sonámbulo” by Federico Garcia Lorca)

On windy nights like this, the cold

intrudes and seeps into each open crack

cold like a needle

cold like a chemical burn

cold like goodbye

and the mind retreats

to warmer times

and calmer places.

She walks like a flame,

a slow dance without a rhythm.

Men watch without coherent motive,

and on a street of wolves

he is a moth.

The snow yields before her,

the wind lights her hair

cold like a needle

and with the numbness of an insect

he follows.

The woman on the Earth

and the man on the moon.

She waits for him

and listens to the wind

as fingers pry apart the joints

of her home

cold like a needle

cold like a chemical burn

waiting while the carcass of a house

is debrided by flakes of snow.

In the pantry, bags of flour

hold the eggs of moths

cold like goodbye

unopened, infested.

Will she be waiting

in the house with creaking boards,

will she be waiting with a smile

and a loaf of bread?

For a moment he wonders

cold like a needle

but the moon rises over him

and he dances in refulgent light.

Where is she, she asks,

your woman in the house with creaking joints?

How long will she wait for you?

But sound can’t travel

from the moon to the Earth,

not through the void which separates them

cold enough to touch the sun

cold like a chemical burn

and he flies toward her.

Her voice is silenced by the wind

as it tears his wings apart.

She catches him,

beneath the distant moon,

the corpse of a moth

sticking to a bed of glue.

He wakes and wonders

where the light has gone.

cold like a needle

cold like goodbye

The scent of maize

is carried by the air.

Is she waiting, he wonders,

is she waiting on the street of wolves

beneath the cruelty of the moon?

Where has she gone?

The ice accumulates,

a rime that falls upon the aching joints

and seals them against the wind,

ice threaded through their home.

The smell of bleach

and mothballs

permeates the house.

cold like a needle

cold like a chemical burn

cold like goodbye

The woman on the Earth

and the man on the moon.