This one I don't sing in the tavern.
This one is only for the room.
The guitar is on the chair where you put it,
the black shawl slipped off it onto the floor
like a woman who got tired of standing.
One glass of wine left. Yours. I'm drinking it.
I want to write you the way the old fadistas wrote the sea:
as something that takes and gives back and takes.
Your shoulders, the long sad bones of them.
Your hands — guitar hands, calloused at the tips,
rough where they shouldn't be,
which is exactly why I let them
anywhere they asked.
The song goes like this. Listen.
First the slow part: you, undoing my earring,
undoing it like a knot in a string,
taking your time, because there is always time in Lisbon,
the trams are always late, the river is always there.
Then the part where the voice breaks.
Every fado has it. You know where.
Your mouth at my collarbone,
my head going back against the cold tiled wall,
the tiles blue, the blue of Sunday,
my hand in your hair, holding on
as if the house were tilting down the hill to the Tejo
and you were the only thing nailed down.
Then the long last note.
You hold it as long as you have breath.
You hold it longer.
There is no applause in this room.
Only the trams, the gulls, the bells of São Vicente,
the wine going warm in the glass,
and you, breathing,
asking in the dark
if I'll sing it again.
