Sydney Overture

Nothing captures the sting of getting close, never closer, and falling away like a shared cigarette half-gone on the sidewalk. A touch from my lips to yours. An almost-kiss. An almost-everything, a streetlight backdrop and not a smoke closer to anything real.

The only memorial for the love of hopeless romantics.

Quiet, casual.

You don't even know if that's the sort of love you want. It's the sort there is. Sharing bus stop newspapers, small hellos, and twenty more smokes. Then twenty-one outside of the diner on Fifth Avenue.

You and the stray dog are hungry just the same.