It’s midnight and the snow has started
on Water Street and we are sixteen and
curfew has come and gone and our faces
are freezing but we don’t want to go
home yet. We walk, hands crammed in
our coat pockets, through the last dying
scents of the late-night coffee shop,
day-old biscotti and the smoking patio
where hipsters suck cloves and cheap cigars
like depressed writers on the ends of shotguns
and tailpipes. We walk through the bar
parking lot, classic rock jukebox thuds
the night like a heartbeat, like my heartbeat,
all youth and small-town longing. One last
Christmas tree on the curb, brown needles
and tinsel, the fading smell of pine resolutions
buried under the bad habits we have only
just begun to cultivate.
on Water Street and we are sixteen and
curfew has come and gone and our faces
are freezing but we don’t want to go
home yet. We walk, hands crammed in
our coat pockets, through the last dying
scents of the late-night coffee shop,
day-old biscotti and the smoking patio
where hipsters suck cloves and cheap cigars
like depressed writers on the ends of shotguns
and tailpipes. We walk through the bar
parking lot, classic rock jukebox thuds
the night like a heartbeat, like my heartbeat,
all youth and small-town longing. One last
Christmas tree on the curb, brown needles
and tinsel, the fading smell of pine resolutions
buried under the bad habits we have only
just begun to cultivate.
Lauren Scharhag is the author of fourteen books, including Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press) and Languages, First and Last (Cyberwit Press). Her work has appeared in over 100 literary venues around the world. Recent honors include the Seamus Burns Creative Writing Prize, two Best of the Net nominations, and acceptance into the 2021 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition. She lives in Kansas City, MO. To learn more about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com
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Excellent - one can't fake experience and maturity. They shine through.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rosanne!
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