A Cold Night In Youth

The night sky
wraps my naked body
in a blanket of cold.

It is cold
as ever, really.

Only you are
not here
to
help warm me
anymore.

I think often of one
night
when I lay open-eyed and
awake
to the cold.

There was no sleep
to be had
and so I
rustled out of our
shared
bed.

I covered you
again, slid your matching
sheet and blanket
under
the holy moonlit curve of your
thigh.

The kitchen tiles
splashed cool spray
on my barefeet.

A little
yellow candle
danced silently
to
itself.

Outside—
The rush of
speeding cars crashed
like the
tide.

I spoke your name
to the cacophony
of cold night city sounds
and
listened
for an echo

In the smoke drifting
off dozing rooftops
I noted the easy
cadence of your
speech.

In the slight wink
of a faraway star,
the soft promise of your
lips.

In the humble yellow
glow of a line of
street lamps, the
light brown hair, so
thin on my neck, my
chest.

I had breathed through
it heavily,
as a man is supposed to
breath, and seen it
swirl like lost petals
of redbud

softly circulating in
an unseen wind, for
whole seconds
up, up, around,
and again

until landing
exhausted
on the street.

Inside—
you kissed me
like I had been three
months gone.

Your fingertips
reached for me
in the dark
and when I found
you, it was like
lying in a bank of
sun-warmed sand.

Your eyes
followed me
easily, and as
you buried your
face into my arm
I felt
the crescendo
of a
smile.

There was the
gentle pressure
of kisses
trailing along my hand,
slowing to a stop
on the inside
of my wrist.

We both lay,
uncovered and
suddenly warmed
all over, tired.

And you
were in love
with
me.

—And yet,
the sounds of the
kisses are now
ghosts to my
ear.

The words we
spoke, foreign
as the
day's memory
of night.

The subtle
swells of
your body
fade from
my fingertips
like lessons
learned
in
childhood.

Only
cold night air
retains
its precision.