garbled radio signals from space. she was a species beyond my comprehension. hands holding me in the darkness. not necessarily in love, but getting there. too drunk to talk. too much talking to remember anything that’d been said. words crossed like intersections in the desert. summer flings came and went. lost islands rediscovered just before you have to go back to school. smart mouthed women. lockers full of diet soda. cans rolling out underneath our feet. someone should clean up this dance floor. fog rolls in. clocks bend and sway in the periphery. icicles dangle and dance on our porch. it’s a creek bed covered in silt. it’s a municipal uniform code. a way to remember all the stuff that’d we always kept forgetting whenever we got together. whenever we got ourselves aligned. just so. just so lovely and old and miserable. thinks hands mean touching. thinks love means surrender. wants to block all the rest out and just fold up here. camp out under the fluorescent starlight. in aisle fifteen. the endcaps filled with lust and despair. a chilly reception. a candid question. asked in innocence and returned with an angry glare. more of a bleakness. wanton use of hips and ass. a military salute towards us both. a covered wagon taking us back home. these horses have been with us forever. helping us always. and have we repaid them with understanding? jumpstarting our shotguns. with which we all know we’ve shot noone. long stemmed roses standing in a wastebasket. black feathers falling from the sky.

i’m a typhoon, i told her. i’ll blow you away with a single heartbeat.

don’t take a single step closer.