Last night: her first time in a hell I was familiar with,
The love song of the void, the sublimity
Of the open road and the way breath hitches
As the headlights strike. Standing in wait. And the grace
Of the driver and the lack of a collision.
The whole world opened like a peroxided
Wound.

Meanwhile:
I tried to stave off nausea a hangover couldn’t cure.
I paid for my own drink and gave it away.
I walked home: lone soul meandering on
The concrete.
I was shaking and
ragged-breathed like
A shot dog.
Cosmic thread strangled
My finger,
Semi-necrosis a sign from her
The world would soon end.

– AJ Powell