litany

really I can't even begin to tell you how holy it felt

lolling around on the floor unwound by alcohol and jazz

and the future which hummed in our bodies like

the hymn off the rim of a wineglass against your finger

when we're all old enough to be old friends I said

then abandoned the sentence but everyone nodded anyway

and it's about this time of night when I start thinking I could do impossible things

like live forever or say just what I mean or remember all the lyrics to american pie

and I'm young enough to know we'll forget what it's like

to be so obsessed with ourselves and our own company

and the beautiful carpet and the beautiful doorknob

all of us selfish and rapturous holding on madly to the edge of a fade-out song

that plays as dawn exchanges our world for a new one

right outside the window

Shiloh Miller