Spanish Guitar

By: Anne Stephanie Cruz

The sandman eludes a desolate you
at witching hour.
Seeking the comfort of strings,
catgut warm against cold fingers,
(familiar, welcoming)
you strum your heart's discontent---
bedouin song of a soul aching to come home
weary from having walked nameless deserts
and seeing one's pyramids turn into mere dunes.

She was a gypsy whose spirit you could not own.
With visions of palm trees and caravans
and finding her own oasis in the sands.

Get Here.
You played many times to the wind.
Calling on its mercies to carry your guitar's melody
to the land of its origins*
past man-made borders and self-imposed barriers
that compounded physical distance,
rendering her deaf to music.

Images still burn
like remnants of a windstorm.
Remembrance brings tears
and causes you to smile, bitterly---
having realized you were holding on to a mirage,
all this time tending to a love past its bloom.

You squeeze your fingers and yank at a string.
The song fades as abruptly as your reverie.

*Spanish guitars originated from the four-stringed Arabian lute