The antiques store where you learned to dance
is already all set up for halloween;
as if this stretch of road knows that part of me
where it is always autumn,
where I am always blindly drowning you in beauty—
In my mind there’s a town called triumph;
The swallows soar so high they become sparks.
You tattooed your poetry on their necks but the sky here knows no language.
In the quiet my fingers intertwine around the wheel and I hear your laugh,
your laugh that has always been lonely, and always will be lonely,
your laugh that renders me as silence in the static of a mind.
‘let’s go someplace that’s always golden,’ you said—
I miss you like you’re gone.
Some days I mourn for the fears I lost like youth to you;
Some days I go hours
without even hearing your name.
(by Avi Lohr ’24)