Overarching palms with scissor edges clack
and lacerate the seldom breeze. Geckos
stick to walls, they bob and click.

You tick off ten times ten steps
from the white hotel down to the water’s edge.
Playa la Ropa, beach of upwashed clothes.

Naked under a striped robe from Morocco
you pale, here. You’ve come to lose
yourself to find what you have lost.

What you find is dark and tender
octopus in garlic, sparkle of cold cerveza,
por favor. At night a bar a beach,

sweat down your back. (Rainy season
but the rains don’t come.) Tequila
and tiritas–a plate of slivered fish

bathed in lime. Yesterday, a diving mask,
another bay, facedown on the taut
membrane between what you knew

and this other all but silent world of glint
and hover, flash and dart yellow silver
blue and you can’t breathe.

At week’s end, you leave the hushed vowels
of the couple next door for the consonant surf
a hundred feet below. Waves come in breaths

against the sand. Under gathering clouds,
you wade chest-deep in the warm blue bay.
When the cold rain taps your skin, you listen.

And what you hear (ay dios mío) you hear
what sounds (adiós mi amor mi amigo)
like the goodbye you have dreaded

and longed for, cool rain
brimming cupped palms,
dancing on your upturned face.

• Purchase David’s chapbook here.
• Visit David’s website here.