A moment, preemptive as nostalgia,
as tangible as watered-down citrus drinks –
a moment drowned in missed translation
& sensation as tenuous as our dance floor
stained by wash lights and acid hope:

as you negotiate the new year wrapped
in your second-best dress, remaking
torpor into second kisses, I’m downshifting
ahead of the E Street exit in standby blue jeans,
cultivating motion like over-smoked cigarettes.

Later, the Circle will be exhausted, it’ll
heave its saturation patrol mundane, and you’ll
explain its language with precision – you’ll never
forgive me for refusing to understand, but I’ll
misremember and remember you eidetic.

For now, I’m stranded near 20th and S,
a tracing paper fantasy in this barely-my-city
on the verge of an event horizon – but you believe,
you say it’s time to put our prophets to bed,
become diplomats, and dream like drunks.

We know what happens next: walking back
to your car, we’ll meet a man missing a girlfriend
& a Labradoodle with whom we’ll trade rumors
for jimsonweed, then flee through the towns along
Potomac to survive like a January romance –

we’ll become inclined to digression & conspiracy,
too old to claim indifference, though naïve enough
for these moments as acrid as the pharmacy
and its shattered glass – these moments,
rationed like meteorites falling at daybreak.