Outside Garcia's Panes

The bawling leaves

Don’t wake him,

Nor slanting rain,

Incessant patter

Accusing him

Of being dead

But he is not that,

Just passed out

On the carpet—

His mouth inhaling

Blue smoke swirls

From a candle

Left unattended,

And now flames

Splash everywhere—

Nightstand, curtains

And he crawls,

Like an infant,

Into the hall, his eyes

Refuse to open.

No more lonely

Night, no more

Emptiness beside.

No more missing

Arms, watery warmth—

Panes, doors sigh open.

Mario Duarte is a Mexican-American writer and an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Fish Barrel Review, Huizache, and Penumbra. He is the author of poetry, To the Death of the Author, and short stories, My Father Called Us Monkeys.