Poem 12

What do we need to say?
A forced cough eats
at silence here.
Parked cars
dirty gold from lights.
But under each light
a shelter of glow protects
white lines on black friction.
You and I stand dirtying
our pants against your
mother’s Chevy
here in the high school lot.
You said you could only write
after or during dark.
Tired hands after eight
flexed over keys
and twisted pencil gray
into margin-flowers.
We are here to swap poems,
forced by each other’s
knowing that we will never
lay it all out, and so we trade.
The slips of paper:
doves darting between shadows.