This time, after driving past our high school,
I didn’t go up the side street with no stop signs
where we smoked cigarettes, kicking around sacks of friendship-
woven rainbow string, beads clicking like music inside. Instead
I took the long road back, winding around
your old apartment where we made love
like a needle grooved into wax, music
spinning, balanced, continuous.
Its numbers were missing, but still it stood
tall and familiar in the evening light, walls
pink as the flamingos etched into its doors, glass mascots
of a losing team. We used each other up,
energy drained like oxygen in space,
holding it in, the last hit
of a burning joint.

Now I exhale you all around me, red light telling me
to stop and look at the sky brushed
with striations of pink and white,
a beautiful, grainy picture through my windshield.
Outside on the corner, two girls sway and bob
at the bus stop to the smooth voice of Nina Simone
sliding out my open car window
coating the night with blues,
their brown arms curved like leather strings
tied tight around my memory.

06/22/2005

Posted on 06/23/2005
Copyright © 2024 Malika Bierstein