A story of echoes
“We are an echo that runs, skittering,
Through a train of rooms.”—Czeslsaw Milosz
i
once we galloped against one another in the backseat of your father’s car
humidity a drape of kisses, falling stars unbuttoned against our throats
shaggy hair caught between teeth, the back window stuffed my language tight
your breasts awoke beneath the tremor of my unbuckled hope, so it seemed
in the night we learned more of ourselves than we dared
all those drive-by starts charting a teen mythology and rocket launches in the dark over the cape
we trapezed fear and broke our lives toward the police light
and off we were
mountain, macadam, deer leaping over a Pocono ditch
our syllables awkward as our fingers
where are you now decades gone, an echo skittering
have I exaggerated this with age
have I aged the exaggeration into song
every lit window in the dampened dark imagined by our breath, so it seemed
then
how many of us in the dark in the park in a town in a state scattered over the nation
how many of bodies caressed the same delinquent moon with moonshine desire
a goodyear of loss and laundry taken up, hung up on the land’s learning
the bootlegger and the apple trees listening up the holler
ask yourself as the lights descend and
the end of things in the night pulls, yet another dark bend
as time still abandons us, piled and frayed in another leaf-strewn corner
