Night Window

for seven nights running she plays with a silver-handled challenge and bade him come into the crusty corners of chapped lips where dreams nest elevated and depressed by the wreath of water rings on the old pine coffee table and listless dustbunnies underneath the window where she gazes through warped glass at the black-eyed man who hunches in his coat, below the oversized hood is the home of trauma mamas and babydaddies while maple and oak in december make a damp and majestic arch over the laughter and tumbleweed trash of waxy cups and black plastic shopping bags and shards of 40 oz bottles up their love, but hate bursts in howls so close to tears you taste the salt of the old man's sweat inside a prism refracted, retracted, hollow and bent those rays of amber streetlamp filling up your eyes until you have to dream to escape so much gold