I know this color as butane.
My suede Birkenstocks, the same orange.
In Spain, butane came with the butanero.
The dream of warm food, hot water in his truck.
Rust-orange tanks, dwarfs with black heads, clanking,
disagreeable traveling together. Locked
up all night. Their color the color of life,
for two hundred pesetas and a tip.
The bottles long gone, the currency too,
the color stays.
First appeared in The Madrid Review