Room 219

These are the closed doors of a hotel hallway.
What once were dreams, what life will one day be.

She dares to ask. Room 217
looks like
a sunny Caribbean isle,
like a shipwreck that can only be reached by
the time of light,
the day spent watching oneself in the naked
mirror of the sheets.

The hands and eyes are questions
and even silence turns its head
to see them shine,
to bask in dreams like basking in the sun,
young and stretched out on the bed.

Their closets hold no luggage.

Perhaps you can hear them. But guard
your traveler’s signature,
because in another window, right next door,
the sun of Room 218
holds the ambiguous light of cloudy days,
memory and future, November skin
between the brightness or the storm.

The traveler is alone. He looks at the television
as you would look at photographs
in a stranger’s house,
as you would seek out familiar faces
amid a city’s throngs.

Who will open the doors of winter,
whose hand holds the key
to Room 219?
Its windows don’t exist
and the empty bed lies ready
for the defeated
to look around, sit down, undress
and lie down to wait,
to navigate the night,
set sail across his own thoughts,
when the world will be nothing
but the noise of footsteps and voices,
on the other side of the door
in the hotel hallway.

Translation from the Spanish
By Katie King