I WAS AMERICAN

 

He was Bolivian.

He told me in broken English

that I looked Venezuelan the night

he barely placed his brown Bolivian hand

on my brown American arm.

 

I smiled at the thought of my charred skin

glistening inside of a tanning bed where I

would pull the top of the casket over my

face goggled with coins for Charon.

 

His body mended

his broken words with left to right motion,

remaining in motion, staying in motion.

It was science,

something physics class never taught.

 

The smell of Armani cologne in a honky tonk,

the look of my cheap pumps

swaying on the equally broken wooden floor,

a natural balance

the thought of communicating in Spanish

through American body language.

 

I liked the idea of his presence, his inability to know me,

to do nothing but touch my waist in a crowded

American room with American smoke circling

in ringlets of freedom in the secluded air.