Two Steps Back
hazy golden light shining on two wheels. the bitterness has burned away like early morning mist. coffee ring stained papers and chicken scratched errors. a woman's languid voice across the table asks if she can just have a drag as an upbeat saxophone remembers that bird was happy sometimes. i feel at ease with this scorecard now - seventeen strikeouts, no decision. lining into double plays and going home content because there's always next time. there's a mournful part of me that follows you down the street, watching you walk with mild interest and a hint of lust as your full hips twitch from side to side. i wonder how it would feel to hold you belly to belly, nothing passing between us but kisses. i can see your small breasts in the waning light, hard like apples and glowing golden red skin like bronze. the afternoon turns silver as evening closes in and songs drift through the air like trailing cigarette smoke from a dying ashtray coal. everything burns eventually, but i crave the salty taste of a skin that i have never known and a familiar buss that i had committed to the prison of memory in the meantime because the past is never absent and the future is just waiting to be imagined.