The Afterlife of the Party

You walk into the room and there's confetti flooding the vapors of spirits,
everywhere the girls and the boys waiting to have a night of bad decisions.
But a moment will change everything.

When you see each other,
somewhere you both know
that your worlds have stopped in the memory of what once was, and the wines have not parted.
You say hello to each other and embrace.
"Haven't seen you in forever!" I've missed you.
But the embrace is long, an ocean-wise solitude,
different than the others.


"You two should hook up or something"
"You're cute together."
Look at these girls, who are just meeting baby blue eyes as he charms them off.
Do they know?

The old christian sits by the fire, languidly informing passers-by about what really happened between us,
"and why they hate each other so much."
Those who only know my face come up to me
and ask me my story.
And they realize, getting to know me, things are different.
Everything's different.


I just finished playing Bioshock Infinite, 
and when he tells her he can't be told where to go,
she says, "you've already been."


That's what sits at the bottom of the glass, below all the hysteria of the night. We, so alive together in the eyes of the unsuspecting,
Have already been.
We laugh deeply, we kiss softly, "like ol' times". World-weary and long-worn, our laughter is really a resonant echo,
for two of us live in the transient moment between memory and death.



Though we're long ghosts now,
it'll take light years before that knowledge hits us,
so we shine on til the sun sets.