One Last Shag

This bar in Bedstuy is filled
with locals in a foreign place.
Music and musk, warm
whiskey and wooden beads
on windows—misplaced precisely
as I am, a Sunday night
with disrupted rhythms
to a dizzying degree, tired eyes
pulled wide.
She strums on the
small stage. Her voice so soft
I can barely hear anything
else but phrases and breaths,
empty spaces separating sounds.
I’ve been here before, to this
bar in Bedstuy. I traveled over bridges
to these rooms that cupped the velvet
voices of angels, a black box so illuminating—
warmed by completed chords and
loose holds on wrists.
And they say these bridges connect
things that should fasten around fingers.
But I’m beginning to believe the opposite,
that I’ll run over wires to detach from
worn grass, to be here in this
foreign place, finally familiar.
No longer longing to leave.