in retrospect that moment was so frail spinning precariously then untying and unraveling in a pile of loops dirt from the ground smudged the ends of my pants loud music made the background grainy the night sky was a cradle for invisible clouds people knocked up against us I had your shoulder blades in my hands you had your arms tight around my neck I thought if I closed my eyes and became blind to everything, to all this periphery no one could see me either and you would still be real, solid under my fingers but you vanished a pink elephant: extravagance, illusion this left me in my bed, waking from a pirouette sleep startled by the street light which burst in between the leaves of a bamboo plant sitting on my windowsill an exquisite, fluid amber light that should have been resting on your skin sprawled on a warm slope of back flirtatiously inviting those particular finger flicks but instead it rested carelessly on my own bare stomach; a tragedy more and more the way I am bruising like this like a demon you appeared again last night I smoked your cigarette, you must have been real I was drunk from candy apple vodka accelerating towards realizations that normally wait for morning I made you nervous, I can tell and usually, I�d feel satisfied but not then it was terrible there, hidden behind my hands pressing against the ground with what gravity I possessed I saw you the next day from my window ambling towards home, slouching above the gravel the look that passed between us could have distracted me from anything