We used to drink wine
and slightly drunk make love
she was so giving then,
but she had to go to Lisbon for a year to study literature,
coming back we took up where we left
but it wasn’t the same,
the river we swam in was hazy
and no rainbow trout waked at dawn;
her eyes were full of sorrow.
Let’s go to Seville she said
we did and prayed in every church
for a cure to an illness
that has no proper name.
Late at night
we ended up in a Tapa bar
where she saw herself as a young woman
dressed as a toreador
smelling of the blood of defeated men,
but then, in the unforgiving mirror,
caught sight her real self and cried.
When I awoke
she had gone
found her in a café drinking brandy
with those who fear sunlight,
she had given up the unfair fight
against an illness that has got no proper name.