I am not iron or sugar
but the sweetness of Greyhound diesel
is one of my base notes
(there is something of Hitchcock,
in an unsettling aura beneath the veneer)
and if we were to dance,
I think time would seem superfluous
to all invention or words.

I thought I forgot how to move freely…
but I just had to look back again,
to the night
(almost thirty years ago now!)
when we jumped off the boardwalk
and felt warm sand
beneath our toes

running until we reached cool ocean spray
-the foam shined like diamonds in moonlight
reminding me
of a highway that led to freedom;
we were suburban rebels, with little cause,
(giggling girls parading as jaded women)

she was fragile and ethereal,
drawing the world in swirls
and she watched as I became
a gyrating gypsy in the surf,
dancing to my own song
(which echoed Creedence and Floyd)

it was unequivocal magic,
dancing at the ocean’s edge

I was sixteen
and didn’t know how rare those moments are
when we touch something
beyond our sense and understanding,
past where love ends
and questions begin
to a place of acceptance

When we laughed,
it was a golden moment,
a warm leftover from a sunburst
eons ago,
before we knew
we knew nothing.
It’s cold now.

Finally a gap
that couldn’t be breached
with his arms or mine-
too far apart, too far;
the touch of his hand
on my back
will never be felt,
my cheek against his
was just imagination…

it will be a civil unrest
in my chest
and I will self-medicate
to smudge rigid lines of reality,
to find a place of quiet beauty
for us,
where small dreams lie peacefully
and bloom gloriously
without malice or fear.