Nocturne

The night smells of Tucson: deep fat fried chicken wings and chimichangas, creosote, melting tar, water on hot asphalt, jasmine. The train sounds like an organ or a choir as it pulls me from sleep in the wolf hour. Magical thinking tells me I can make the past right, but stars tell me I have to pour love into mistakes, the paths I have taken. They say make beauty out of chaos. You can never go back. If you did, you would find only ghosts. Very well then, I will walk with ghosts. My heart wants to make it right; my head knows I have to forgive. And so, this is my life, a fried Southwest tortilla, not, as I hoped, a cool, blonde, snow-capped milkshake. Here, in the dark, we can sit together, remember that the sky was once on fire with the colors of a dying day.