Weeknight traffic in San Salvador
She is too busy selling roses to tell her story.
While deciding how to structure this poem
I shadow her along the sidewalk
As she walks along the space
Between the two lanes of cars stopped
Before the traffic light.
She holds both bouquets
And single red roses,
And grunts, “Roses, roses,”
Into the closed car windows.
Three boys in the back of
A pickup truck
Laugh and shout,
“Let me buy you instead mamacita,”
And she carries forth,
To the closed Toyota,
The closed Hyundai,
So many closed drivers
Closed off from the idea
Of giving something
Their amore something
Foreign from the street.
She wears a black lycra skirt
With little white shapes on it
Fighting inside the folds.
Her belly hangs over the waistline.
She has dark skin,
Dark cheeks,
Dark hands
And white roses,
A red lace blouse
And red roses,
Curly dark hair
Coiled up in a red scrunchie,
White pupils, whitish fingernails,
A whitish sister left over
From the war.
As I follow her
Under the empty moon,
I contemplate buying myself a rose
And whistle a French song
Which roughly translates to,
“I’m going to buy myself a rose
And only talk about myself.”
And then I decide to ignore it all.
I don’t buy myself a rose.
I tell her story instead of mine.
