At a Coffee Shop in Buenos Aires, my Divorced Friend Shows me a Picture of her Wedding/Elisa Díaz Castelo

I didn’t know her then and yet,
in the picture, she’s more like herself
than the woman sitting here beside me.
Look at us, she tells me, with this other
face of hers, these other hands. And her eyes:
asphalt after rain and midnight hunger.
In the picture, the newlyweds dance
and outside we are alone, she and I, talking.

The sadness of others is an unknown city,
we have no idea where its streets might take us,
torn down houses, glass buildings, facades
and crumbling ceilings and corridors
of curved, of creaking, wood. We can imagine
so little. The trivial illusion
of having spent our lives there and knowing by heart
the tumult of main street, the bus routes,
each subway stop, will stand but a few instants.
For it is almost impossible to imagine
habit. The saddest memory
is only a station where thought pauses,
an unsurprised glance at the ruined theatre,
all seen so many times, all
just routine. Slowly, even the greatest
sorrow loses sharpness
and pain is changed into a thing
of rounder edges.

At the table before us,
an old couple eats without speaking.
It is silence. It is the ancient ritual
that summons them to die by parts
and face to face. Perhaps one day
you’ll wake and have forgotten
the bare-footed steps of your lover
on the wooden floor of your first home.
Now night falls,
the city closes in around our words.
The old couple stands to leave, the place empties.
In the background I hear a tango and can’t remember
its name. I suddenly feel this afternoon too
is very distant, that we are, ourselves,
so far away from Buenos Aires.