On a night with no inspiration

My muse is sitting out on the back porch, drinking something and wiggling her bare toes in the cool night air. She was reading Petrarch this evening. Petrarch always makes her quiet and pensive–she hates that old Italian, and she kept murmuring, “Trovommi amor del tutto disarmato.” She smokes another cigarette, watches the sun set, gets all maudalin and teary. I noticed she was also reading an old novel–can’t figure out what that’s all about. She likes April in Texas because the weather is always all over the place, at once too hot, too cold, too dark. I tell her I’m going to write about love, but she silently dismisses me and pulls out an old notebook where she starts to scribble. “He was right. Petrarch was right. How could he live with himself?” This time I walk away. A big, huge raindrop lands on her foot, and lightning is grumbling all around. She quotes quietly, “Que ni el amor destruya la primavera intacta.” I can smell the smoke from her half-burned cigarette. A filthy habit, but she doesn’t smoke really; she lights them and lets them burn. She doesn’t as much smoke as she does burn cigarettes. “You know, you need to start a new project,” she calmly says as the dark settles across the horizon. It was always nights like this when I knew that she loved me, but then again, no. I ask, “What would Lorca have said?” Without blinking, and as cold as ice she answered, “Sucia de besos y arena, / yo me la llevé del río.” She just stared out into the night, the wind was combed by the fig tree’s empty branches, and the stars traced infinite paths in the heavens. Ni nardos ni caracolas tienen el cutis tan fino ni los cristales con luna relumbran con ese brillo.–Lorca

On a night with no inspiration

My muse is sitting out on the back porch, drinking something and wiggling her bare toes in the cool night air. She was reading Petrarch this evening. Petrarch always makes her quiet and pensive–she hates that old Italian, and she kept murmuring, “Trovommi amor del tutto disarmato.” She smokes another cigarette, watches the sun set, gets all maudalin and teary. I noticed she was also reading an old novel–can’t figure out what that’s all about. She likes April in Texas because the weather is always all over the place, at once too hot, too cold, too dark. I tell her I’m going to write about love, but she silently dismisses me and pulls out an old notebook where she starts to scribble. “He was right. Petrarch was right. How could he live with himself?” This time I walk away. A big, huge raindrop lands on her foot, and lightning is grumbling all around. She quotes quietly, “Que ni el amor destruya la primavera intacta.” I can smell the smoke from her half-burned cigarette. A filthy habit, but she doesn’t smoke really; she lights them and lets them burn. She doesn’t as much smoke as she does burn cigarettes. “You know, you need to start a new project,” she calmly says as the dark settles across the horizon. It was always nights like this when I knew that she loved me, but then again, no. I ask, “What would Lorca have said?” Without blinking, and as cold as ice she answered, “Sucia de besos y arena, / yo me la llevé del río.” She just stared out into the night, the wind was combed by the fig tree’s empty branches, and the stars traced infinite paths in the heavens. Ni nardos ni caracolas tienen el cutis tan fino ni los cristales con luna relumbran con ese brillo.–Lorca