Outside the Cafe

This morning on the Malecon, I see that there are no more love letters. No one comes here for longing, to miss someone. No one.

We walk the old city avoiding hills, the righteousness of gravity, trickles among the cobblestones. A man walks shouldering a crate of tomatoes. He might know something about it.

You were here two months before me, had an affair with a man with down-turned eyes and thick lips. The city is dirty with your clumsy hands, your kisses stain walls along the market street like warnings.

Outside the café, a man with a ladder gets lost in the cat’s cradle of wires string between store fronts above him. He stands caught and closes his eyes.

Morning light plays dust across the trees, dirty as dirt. This all happens in the time of the slipping, the letting go. There are no more love letters. Just the city of steps and stumble and stray dogs. No one comes here for longing.