It was nighttime in your city. A big city. There were lights and people, and you had to smoke outside. Kitten heels and popped collars were parting ways with their drinks at the bar like farwelling a lover before stepping down the stoop to bum a light. This is the kind of place I was supposed to live in.

We go to a reading for Hacks. They call them jitneys in Pittsburgh, but here they are hacks and they read damn good poetry. Wit cracking whips and the word “fuck” rolled off the tongue like the serenity prayer—they use it as an adjective, a verb, a noun. I love their tables. The way their chairs are crushed too many together, dirty tan coats and checkered motif flyers.

This is the kind of night when I don’t want my footsteps to stop. We could walk into the morning, down Broadway with the sun. We could. We can press our heads together and fall asleep on the subway with our hands on each other’s wallets. We kiss and we yawn. You know life is good when you feel like you’re the sidestep character in a favored book; you say something irrelevant but well-timed on some dog-eared page and we never go home. Maybe the story ends with us swaying in the car seats back to Brooklyn. Maybe it ends with the last star out of sight, and Spanish music playing from Hoboken balconies. Pan the camera everywhere. We can do this forever.

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