the cherry end of your cigarette against the pale sky

outside the prickling air burned hot
against what we’d left behind

and all that we scraped and cupped
ourselves for while trying to catch

the last vestiges of someone’s history
their life here and back and somewhere

in that hummed and whistled journey
across the plains and valleys and state lines

invisible to hunger and thirst
and the pursuit of want and need

tomorrow the railroad tracks
will shimmer in the heat

of the summer that arrived
as we were heading out of town

because as in those things past
we too have someplace we need to go

what does it matter
that there are no words

to compensate for the longing
and emptiness of the evening’s solitude

brought in by the winds
of our own stormy reluctance

unwilling to settle for anything less
than what we give in our taking

our own words muted by a laughter-less language
rattling bucket-empty like a windmill

spinning against a prairie horizon
that does not distinguish between

yesterday or tomorrow
them or us

his or hers
yours or mine

it was what you didn’t say
that caught my attention

and how you pressed your lips to the wind
your eyes blazing in the moonless night

Copyright © 2024 by Levi Romero. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 8, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“The poem was inspired by my oral history project, Following the Manito Trail, [while] documenting the diaspora of northern New Mexico Manito culture in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Following the Manito Trail is an interdisciplinary ethnographic project that documents Hispanic New Mexican, or Manito, migration from New Mexico to different parts of the United States. The Spanish words manito and manita come from the words hermanito and hermanita, which mean ‘little brother’ and ‘little sister,’ [respectively]. They are terms of endearment often used among Spanish-speaking communities in New Mexico.”
—Levi Romero