One For The Road Poem by Rachael Swiss

In the great exodus of daydreams I waited for you...

Looking out through bullet-proof reflective windows
Onward into tunnels of extinguished memories
Voices clashed and clattered on the uptown 6
Everyone wishes they could find their way home.

Your soggy cardboard casement took to ruins
Open and beckoning with a flick of the wrist to wayward souls
Usurped by these underground passageways and rivers for trains.

If I close my eyes now maybe I won't remember the curve of your eyelashes.

Masked veils of washed-out cobalt glass -
I liked your audacity when I caught you catching me
Staring back at me, burning through my
Shame – you had Cycloptic laser-beam eyes.

You'd laugh then and damn me
Owning up to nothing,
Understanding the intricacies of everything.

All the subways and buses led to you
Not even the taxis offered an escape route
Demanding penance and grievances and a $1 tip.

I had sinned and the whip crashed down upon me with the roof of your temple.

Wincing and trudging with Suzanne Vega singing Caramel in my ears
And the new blood spewed forth like hot lava
Needlessly burning down the old flames
Tearing up the battle scars to lap at fresh skin, moist and pink.

Tough love, tough luck,
One more for the bed with no posts.

Coming home I always used to think about us
Owning up to the fact that this was it now
My empty apartment is all that's left
Even the cat has missed you.

Hell took a year too long to travel
On this information super-highway of gridlocked city streets
Memories are melting, falling away from me like scabs in time
Everything has changed, including me.