1
Dispatch → Bulletin → Opinion
by 
The Eternal Gratitude of Land Without Shrimp.
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7 reads.
Companions
It's quite cold outside and that is fine by me,although you shiver and say it's not at all
and press a little closer, grabbing my arm for warmth
and I suppose we're not in Florida anymore
and we walk a little farther,
talk a little longer,
intertwine our fingers in the beauty of the night
and I can't hold back my poetry
and thus expose my silly heart to yours.
I blush, grateful for the darkness yet you smile into the night
and otherwise stay silent for what more is there to say?
The moonbeams trickle through the branches bare and slight
and the moment is approaching, a bench not that far away
and I motion for a moment, that we may head that way
and you incline your head to the side just so,
in that fashion peculiar just to you, say no
and now it's my turn to smile and turn and say
or we can keep on walking I suppose.
The buildings near us crowd a little closer, the neon lights glow a little brighter,
and the music of the stars gives way to the faint pounding of the music of the clubs,
and though we have often danced our nights away, tonight is not for dancing
at least not inside a building framed of concrete, brick and steel.
And so we keep on walking,
talking of oh so many things,
the earlier fragile moment still hanging in the air,
like some delicate fruit,
unripened but not forgotten.
Now the midtown bar scene behind us, light less neon and less proud,
now just shy bare-branched trees and quiet sleeping houses all around,
and that random impulse that you'd ignore at any other point of time
presents itself and you laugh when I suggest it but you agree
eyes shining luminously as you nod your head eagerly
and so we slow and so we stop and so we lay
upon the asphalt in the middle of the road,
side by side we commune in silence, your hand pressed firmly into mine,
you'd think we might say a word or two but no, we silent lay,
gazing up at the clouds scudding across the moonlit skies.
