It’s late October in the Long Ago.
You go, hand-in-hand, with her at night with Winter’s cold bite not yet present, go to that traveling carnival somewhere in northern Virginia on the first-frost night when your breath is visible and entangles with hers as shades of a future perfect.
She smells warm, her vinaceous lips glazed from a stolen kiss and her hand feels good in yours as you two stroll under the bright Midway lights, and the Midway’s smells and dissonance, and the unseen Autumnal Zephyr blows the cold night wind over you and her such that she moves closer to you but you nor she care, least this moment, least this awakening between the two of you, are both lost forever.
The night opens to you as she did earlier in that day’s afternoon when you both became one in the bed sheets and touched each other and time was crooked (but we were young!) and you and her, afterward, slept until night came upon you like sackcloth over the Moon.
And this is the way of it even when the Clown steers you both, walking hand-in-hand, to that vestibule chasm the Tunnel of Love.
And the Lovers go to this place where even Fate takes a Gamble.
All on a cold night of little or no importance.
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