We spent last summer wound in each other's arms
In the front of my beat up Ford S80.
Her blouse would be half unbuttoned and she'd always smell of lemon pancakes and old pine-wood.
I remember the sunsets; in the rear-view mirror the sky would glow behind her, light her hair up like an angel's halo.
We would pull into a gas station, I'd get out first, open her door from the outside like they did in the movies.
I'd pump the gas and she'd go into the store for something, a coke, refreshers, a cup of black coffee.
They always made it from grounds, in one of those glass jugs.
We'd drive on into the night, welcoming the cool desert air,
then we'd pull over into some motel and open the blinds.
We could lie there forever, staring up at the whirring ceiling fan, wrapped in those noisy, crisp sheets.
We'd make love to the sound of cicadas and the faint chitchat on RadioWax.
Then the sun would come up and we'd move on again.
As August came and went, so did our desert nights,
and now I only see her in the polaroid that sits on my nightstand.

Late at night near a rural shelter, a wizened figure hobbles closer.
With chapped lips he drags on a bone pipe,
the warm smoke hangs in the air.
I stand still, breathe it in politely until my throat itches.

I'm told a tale of some faraway town
and a girl, his daughter, who left one night without explanation.

As an owl hoots somewhere behind us,
He wipes away a tear. It leaves a clean track through the layers of soot and grime.

A dog barks in the distance and the hedge full of cicadas almost drowns out his whispered, dreary tale.
I cough and move to reach for my wallet. He doesn't see.
He has started to shuffle away,
murmuring to himself about how she never made it back home.

Tiny lights within her amber eyes
flash like pools of silver.
Cicadas call into the night, a forest choir, dark and soothing,
while a glittering mass slumbers in the trees.
The forest snores lazily, on the droning lilt of a midnight breeze.

The house creakes away at the top of the hill, some say.
Oak floors groan under the wind's breath,
Lamplight flushes across the landing.
Silver-white toes brush the rug in the moonlight
and silk skirts softly rustle on flagstones.
Or was it a castle? Old as ivy,
with beaten black stone, mahogany vaulting
sleepless armour and the façade of power.
Perhaps it was a shack in the forest,
higgledy piggledy, animal skins,
black wood smoke and a *** brewing on the stove.
Our tales are told in shadow, the cover of night,
We lust after stories in perfect candlelight.

She moved to Seattle in '99,
Poet, Lover, bar-hopper,
bought an apartment on 4th avenue.
She wrote poems for the papers.
She'd leave work early, coffee in hand,
and sit in the park to watch the leaves turn.
An auburn lake, mist creeping onto her lap,
Tartan skirt and Turtle-neck weather.
Only 22, She grew Sunflowers
and traded them for milk at the local convenience store.
She had big hopes for a job in Chicago,
but turned it down when she met the bartender
that suddenly changed her mind about bar-hopping.
They bought a little yellow house in Mirrormont,
and the leaves from the state park
drifted lazily into their yard of sunflowers,
which she no longer needed to trade for milk.
She'd moved to Seattle in '99,
as an English girl with too little time.