SmokeLong Quarterly

In bed at night, hearing the last conversations on the street, I’m still moving with the train cars. Still looking in the living rooms of the houses along the tracks. Lights are orange over oil paintings of barns and swallow-filled skies. Potatoes boiling in the air, a hiss of someone’s tongue. You are already in the kitchen, perhaps sorting beans, filling a glass with milk. Our son asks you to be the bear. More, he says, but he means again. In the new town, I think of the bay and the ducks floating asleep. The cups and cans, shoes, jump ropes washing up on the rocks at night. This is our only nature. Some winter we will smooth a path on the street and slide on our stomachs. Under cars. Past the laundry mat where our clothes are folded and numbered. Past the Polish Bakery. Through the long hollow that brings city to city. Blue hands in snow drifts. The sway of trains. The summer water that is long gone. You tell me we must accept these things for a time. We kiss before sleeping, and I taste your salty cheek. Your hands fold under my pillow.