Shutter Snaps and Smoke Rings

You tell me to take a mental picture so
I stand in the middle of Oberlin street,
bathed in egg yolk sodium streetlight,
arms held in front of me, framing
two lean bodies between L-shaped hands
and I press myself into the shutter,
feel something inside of me close around
this place, fill the three of us with light.

Through the lens of time, I was young
in this place too. From separate balconies
we could sit and watch each other's ghosts
swallow summertime and smoke. On the roof,
the sky holds us close; any higher
and our electric skin would show stars.

But, we are built of soil and concrete,
singular, momentary creatures not made
for eternities. Like my memories, your home
smells of cobwebbed stairwells, cat fur,
burnt resin, swells of linoleum, clouds
of fruit flies, mountains of spent glass
and aluminum. We once were seeds,
but now this land is rich for growing
and so we do.