Torn Stocking Tango

They struggle with a violent grace, the bawdy cries of a bandoneon, the open gash of her torn stocking. They both understand that naked desires 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 dance 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 seems to reflect their deeper wounds, holes where hope died, and nothing they seek now, can ever fill them.