Shortwave Radio Lies

Rainwanderer of lost nights
Stumbling through distressed doorways
up spiral staircases to fast-fading
crescent-moonlit rooftop epiphanies
Meandering hushed through cobblestone alleys
and ancient graveyards
her brown hair cascading down my shoulder
I lift a kiss in the mist
before pausing to read the epitaphs
Cat’s eyes pierce the dark
bodyless, suspended
We move on
under the transient light of the black-iron streetlamps
time elastic, unbound

Somewhere off King Street
golden pints of beer in hand
we slip out of consciousness on a rusted park bench
down the hourglass and into strange dreams
Suit jackets, horse trailers
eggs flying through air
breaking on our unsuspecting backs

The Battery is silent at 4 a.m.
Save for the lapping water
The creak of the bench swing
The pop and hiss of a match
Wisps of smoke curling in the Atlantic breeze

I feel the stud on her tongue as our
still-teenaged lips press together
urgent, overpromising
thinking nothing of what comes next
We stand, arm in arm, atop the concrete parking deck
staring hopeful for a moment into the blazing low-country sunrise

In an unfamiliar dorm room
I sit awake, her head heavy on my chest,
rising and falling with my every breath
In a few hours she’ll be on a plane back to Portland

We are fleeting
Spatio-temporal beings
locked in our own mystery
Beams of light that intersect but once