the one where I watch you walk back into the room

in reverse

snow spiraling up

outside the window

as light bends, refracting

on the glass like a prism

a shattered spectrum

of color spills across the floor

we unhug

settle back into the couch

frozen in time, yet somehow still moving

in a snowglobe held upside down

i press the joint into the V of your fingers

inhaling a cloud

this time, i don’t leave for baltimore

the morning after christmas

on a greyhound bus

this time, it isn’t the last time

i see wrinkles fractal

across your face when you laugh

strange, how rewound laughter

looks almost exactly the same –

a palindrome of joy

blink, and the scene shifts

now we’re driving backward

faster than i’d like

worn tires over snow-stitched roads

i hand you the joint you’re about to unlight

its ruby ember sucking in smoke

as you lean toward me, mouth open

to tell me something important

most likely about music

or god. i want to listen, but i have to

blink. and we’re in a cemetery

unsmoking another and it’s ironic

but not in a funny way

and you seem to know this –

solemn as the stone

beneath your fingers

tracing names, asking who

they might have been, or become

so i can conjure stories

temporarily resurrecting

the dead.

as i’m doing now.