Poetry and Travel

Meu Fado

My dream of Portugal

“Meu Fado”

I let myself enter the Fado with my heart first. The lady of Nazare placed the basket in my hand. She wore seven skirts layered under a black knit belt, a tradition to honor those that never returned from the sea. Each skirt a different color, for a different day, and a different memory, until the day she no longer remembered the taste of his kiss.

I take the basket from her, sea snails, pale green, olive green, stale green salted bellies twisted and coiled, a soup of shells stewed in brine. I place stiff dried cod one on top of the other.

I let myself enter the Fado with my heart first. An empty wooden chair sits in the sand resting lifeless under rainbow-colored houses, blue, red, yellow, perched on cliffs above the bay. A toothless woman kneels by the spume her leather face tough as circumstances she came to meet; to ask the sea to forgive her for something she never did; to ask for a sign of life of the son she never had.

Tonight I let myself enter the Fado with my heart first, my bare feet firm against the sun-warmed cobblestones. I stare down at the lemon wedges laying on the crispy sardines, roasted over open coals, smoked skin wrinkled, burned, some flesh to pull back.

The cafe is full, a hint of fish broth and desire in the air like the single saffron bulb hanging over her jet black hair. Her face sliced into right angles by the unlit corners of her expression. Her mouth opens, a molasses voice intoxicates me with a velvet purr of a dark story, Her vocal cords swallow the room. The rhymes piggybacking on the jao, zja, and amare, words I don’t understand. Her arms fall out of her black silk dress she pulls her heart from the shadows and places into the sky.

I move closer while seated still, alone. A Portuguese guitar tickles the moment that wraps itself around me; a notion of love in rhythm of syncopated chords coming from a place without a past or future.

The wind rearranges her lines with all the vowels resting on her scarlet lips, opened for a moment to catch her breath, she inhales me with her eyes shut. I feel her in the marrow of things I can’t explain, in those melodies plucked out of the sea.

The pata negra falls from the drying hook onto my lap, fresh bread, black oil, and dark wine.

Tonight I let myself enter the Fado with my heart first The singer’s chest heaved up over the cracks in the floorboards the melody held me still after the waves receded as they slid across the stone walls. A puff of deep emotions, she exhaled, a candle sitting in front of me flame flickers, fingers tapping against my hesitation. The song opens me. I hear the pitter-patter of crabs scurrying back under the kelp covered rocks.

I stare out of the window past the silent guests caressing their digestifs, a porto in one hand, a cigarette in the other, tar thick smoke lingers on wet words they can’t express as she pull out the song from behind where they are seated. A pale lavender thump, a plate of eel stew placed in front of me next to my empty glass. Her voice vibrating the soft hairs at the nape of me neck. The guttural tonic releases me into the night.

I look past the breakwater that protects the harbor, past the fishing boats resting for the night, past the waves lapping against a white-washed sea wall the paint cracked and peeling from the violent winter swells. I glance over the silver ripples I watch as my body floats out to sea, melting into the deep blue darkness.

The smell of garlic and cigars, his calloused hands grabbing me, thumbs probing the soft flesh I hide under the midnight blue of my skirt.

I shudder as my body remembers the stories the Fado won’t dare to sing to me as I let myself enter with my heart first.

The poet has never been to Portugal. The words were inspired by music in a language she does not understand but understand scompletely.

What is Fado?

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Audrey Stimson is a writer living in a green house with her husband and two dogs. When she is not writing essays and short stories she works as a television news producer. She is currently working on a forthcoming book about a bicycle trip across the United States.