Queridos

After eleven it is hard to tell who is more tired—I, or the night itself. Both of us sink to fill spaces forgotten in daylight, both of us melt and sigh.

The candle flame dances to a heater’s hum and the maraca footfalls outside my door: fiesta, siesta, I cannot speak Spanish but lying in warm sheets I hear the language, spoken by someone I have yet to meet.

Midnight and outside looks thick as clay but nowhere near as pliable. Somewhere a sculptor's arthritic hands creak and I breathe to the imagined sound of it in the trees, and my bones, and the settling night.

This poem won the Ryan Chighizola Memorial Scholarship and was published in Ellipsis, Vol. 41, Article 25.