I perched a cigarette between my lips as we sat in a window
Kind of between the window and fire escape
Just between the moon and tumbling embers
Falling into ash and becoming indistinguishable from
City with concrete and rats and small grasses in the cracks.
And we sat
The windowsill wasn’t enough to hold much
Starting down the alley behind Michigan ave.
My feet, the cigarette and I were floating just above the ground
Metal that I couldn’t quite find confidence in, and we, well, I
I was the distance between the balcony and dumpster.
That might be too literal.
Mom used to call our attention to an especially large moon.
“Look!”
“The cookie moon!”
She’d say. We would steal a moment.
We would steal a moment gazing out the bay window.
The backyard frozen in blue hues bordered by our barnyard red living room.
I used to tell Mom, “I love you to the moon and back” and she’d reply,
Echoing my sentiment. Our back and forth would escalate.
It would escalate until with my whole chest I’d say
“I love you to the moon and back INFINITY!”
And mom, she would cut the lights. And the moon you could pluck it
It looked like it might blink or fall from the sky. Heaven forbid.
It takes like 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach us and just over a second for moonlight.
And as for the blink of an eye between the ground and 9th floor fire escape.
You could call it infinity. You could call it never really letting go.