Originally published in Redivider

Time Travelers

We hopped from bar to bar until we traveled
through time, until we were on your roof
with a bottle of wine that I kicked off
but at least nobody got hurt, until under the covers
of darkness you murmured sweetly each time
I took your hand. In the morning, skin ripening
with twelve new mosquito bites, I could feel the layers of Brooklyn
peeling away, your memory along with it. You said,
Is there anything else left to talk about? I had a feeling then
that it wasn’t over, but if I never saw you again, at least I had
one memoryless night, a photo that can’t reanimate.
Isn’t that the problem with traveling
through time? By the end, we had known
each other for a lifetime, but by morning, we were newborns
again. All I remembered was hearing
about the summer you couchsurfed in China, homeless
most days, warm the next. In exchange, I told you about the year I slept
in hotel lobbies more than my own house, then posed
a question: If all I remember from thirteen is my mother
chasing me out of the house
with a knife and back into it, does it matter
that thirteen was a whole year? Or might it as well
have been a night? Lately I find myself
unable to live like the world matters. So how do I admit this?
Sitting on your roof, the uncertainty of us
was familiar. As cozy as my hotel lobbies, as the park benches
you had talked about. I figured I might get to stay
by being the only one who never left.
On the roof, you played a song: not enchanting
until the end, all the soft notes congregating
on the rooftop of my ears. How like us
it was, I thought, nothing beautiful about it
except the goodbye.