I am alive
and this is a beginning
warm breathing and awake
this is a beginning

There are stories telling themselves in the next room
I should be listening to them, pocketing those stories for my own
to make them famous with my mouth

But tonight is mine
The Thief of moments is tired
and wants a story for himself

and then there she is, a blur of pink and pale
snatching me up in her conversation before I can run
asking me who what and why, and never waiting for my reply

in the days to come, the ones I can't see from there
she will prove a tough nut and tender knot
of pleasure, pain, and desperation

She is an alleyway and dead end and I know that now
but for that moment she was a story that needed telling
a tale without an end, one I could make my own

I smiled at her and we danced
two drunk Americans in a sea of lonely English
telling each other's stories and for a single night
making each other happy

AcB 01.27.01