Window View
Once, when you tried to drive me home,
We stepped into the hazy outside
And saw fog lying prone on the night roads,
We looked up into the moon, only a faint aura then,
Squinting its tiny eye,
Locked hands, and retreated
back to the grated metal balcony that, had we gone forward,
And we could have,
Would have made a sharp turn and descended into stairs.
Smoke rose from sidewalk mirror-pools.
Our shoes made sounds like glitter,
Like broken glass,
Like the sharp, frozen stones
that would have hit your windshield if we hadn’t turned around.
I liked that car, and
It was cold. Your hands were warm.
The window was burning orange.
Your thumb found mine.
It wasn’t safe to go home in the dark.
Nic Hinson is an undergraduate student of English and philosophy at The University of New Mexico, and a burgeoning small-big-city-town Midwestern creature-thing. They have been writing poetry since they learned to write and just recently began writing poetry they like. All of their work is partially credited to their cat, Nutmeg, for her supervisory role.
