Torn Stocking

They struggle with a violent grace, the bawdy cries of a bandoneon, the open gash of her torn stocking. They both understand that naked hopes come last, first there is this ceremony the ritual goading white flesh and dark shadows must be rubbed with an urgent blood. This bar is a plaza de toros, a place for the lace mantilla to be torn away, a floor for broken nightingales They are cheap wine but they know how to pour, crushed and tied as they are to the pressing moment. The gap in her stocking is not large but its wound is deep, and sadly nothing, nothing they have to offer can ever fill it.