The future hung over everything we did,
exchanging presents, as we liked to do,
books and nuts and chocolate, a canopy,
sound of bullfrogs and cicadas, over everything we’d done,
chocolate and nuts, books we talked about,
backroads, gas station blazing in the August night
we pinballed into, the restaurant with the singer,
tips in the jar, how I ate a cherry tomato.
Later, fog rose from the river,
settling on both sides of the windshield.
We drove past the point we couldn’t see
then opened the windows and blasted heat.
I wanted never to bounce back.