You and I- 

Met two years past, numerous pints of gin and cheap beers, sat in smoky rooms for hours on end, talking. 

Now it's nine o'clock as I sit waiting, listening to the hum of interstate travelers rushing through asphalt mists: concerts and Thanksgiving. 

The time creeps along and you arrive. 

We leave, ride together, I, staring out my window as fog unfurls through street lights, a very few citizens, remnants, left shuffling down sidewalks, on their way to movies or bed. 

You open the door and we slip into the night's cool envelope, as chill alley winds flirt with the hem of my skirt, make me look at you and feel protected. 

We step inside the bar, 

Smoke and stares and dreary men with talls and rocks and 2 up twice as many we sit. 

You grab the first round, always that faint hint of gentlemanly conduct, and sit at our bent table, gold matchbook slanting from under its third leg. 

I stare at my shifting lime, caught in ice traps and gin, rock it back to meet me and swallow its last cool fire. 

You sit beyond me, before me, like some African plant in the rain. 

I feel as though my heart is expanding-Scattered overhead lights loom and pulsate like liquid lifeblood, as young dread-locked men play the ivory over sixties radio. 
 

These sick, corner molded expectations I keep crash from me, spilling on the table, half-drying on the floor. 

You say you need one more.  Ring of condensation, drops sweet glistening like dew on skin: pulses. 

I slip my hand past my own low glass, which seems to be weeping onto my napkin, pouring through the fibers, seeping towards your own. 

Swelling stink of creation rises in the air as I dip my foremost finger into the traces of your glass, slow cohesional pool following the weary line I draw for it. 

You sit again, glass already half empty, and lay a string of quarters on the table, scattering ashes like leaves or summer children. 

The room is hazy- 

I stand up, lingering, count change and light another cigarette, walk to the bar, my heels clack curving on the floor, sounding like eons, acceleration. 

I stare ahead, poker face walk step and no admissions. 

See the hard, clutch and whiskey stares of brown bearded men sitting with hats on, eyes down low, drawing pictures on their tables of what we may look like underneath. 

Pido, 

My voice muffled, wobbling over the circus boys upstairs, collegiate and pristine, scholars of backs, thighs, swimming pools, rotten swarming ponds in heat of early autumn. 

I slip three worn, stuck edged bills across the counter to a dried up man whose eyes are still wet with wonder, and return to our dim table, another rocky ship (with lime) in hand.  Maybe this one's the Santa Maria, giving me curses and genitalia, some odd, sick hope of passage. 
 

So quickly paranoid, and shift intensity to red walls, pool cues, mixed up men in pantyhose who wait for the evening's prey. 

I suppose they had to powder their noses. 

But with company? 

You and I- 

I'm watching you like tea leaves. 

You look like laughter and anticipation, slow tipping and wandering in your chair.  You smile, head tilted, pointing low but looking high, 

right at me. 

You slide three quarters off the table, stroll two steps to green felt gameplace and stand to shoot. 

First ball slams in pocket as you lean back, hands wrapped loosely around your cue, to watch the way this game plays out. 

I rise and slip the cue from your dark hands. 

Chalk slides onto my fingertips and hands as blue as heart. 

Perhaps I'll faint like some red lipped starlet, and before I fall feel you beneath me, bracing me, body smelling of shadow, halls, tunnels, 

patchouli gilette mist of deep Indian forests: 

Bengal 

Sudan. 

I am not sure what has happened here, 
 

how this ceiling presses upon me and how all of these faces, nameless, hunched slouched creatures, anonymous, sit and will never know I stand among them, bursting and cringing and wondering how to escape from, or into, this mess. 

And you stand, always loose and grinning. 

always waiting for whatever and whomever come your way, 
easily removed, easily composed, in all of this. 

We leave, listlessly, to roam like caged tigers on hemline streets, watching old men in ancient woolen coats or stoles who pace like prophets on Cotton and Main. 

I thought when you came over, pants drooping, silver rings dancing past the shadows of your skin, I thought you wouldn't see it; how quickly I get you a beer, how I balance and tip on all of your words.  You stand like lightning, slow smirk emerging on your lips. 

leaning, smoking, standing to peer out my window, cigarette 
slanted in your mouth, while I sit neatly, watching with parchment 
eyes your movements, flinches and graces. 

You used to wear a hat. 

Now it's limp, hung crooked on your belt. 

You sit back easy and quick, like a napping panther in my chair.  It nestles you inside it to sit all night, 

and look at the love that looks back at you.