Nikki Paley Cox

Boleros, June

The last time I remember breathing
was early June at the Goodman,
the end of Boleros for the Disenchanted
we held each other under house lights like
we were the elderly Puerto Rican couple
upstage right, in that cramped apartment
on Long Island with a hospital bed, not
in row FF at the end of a Sunday matinee.
Other patrons funneled under the exit sign
smiling discreetly while I whimpered
into your blue shirt, I would choose
what Eusebio did, I would—and you
smoothed your hand over my curls,
saying Breathe, breathe, and I did
in traditional 2/4 time, the rhythm of each
breath began the slow tunneling through
to where characters in soliloquy go,
where we follow them, where trovadores
play guitar in dusk-dark plazas, cafes,
in the streets, in nightclubs with castanets,
where they sing to us, close, tell
what the music says about us. I heard them once,
singing Spanish from a balcony in June
against the backdrop of the stage of row FF,
where I was breathing a bolero, spanning
a century, deliberate, itinerant, slow-tempo.

 

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