The time when I was known

There is night and
it weights thickly
and it protects us from
light and exposure and
it lands around us
defining our
edges

There is us, within the
car, hands warm around cups of
latte mixed with hot
chocolate and sweet liquid mixed
with cold, crisp night.
The blurred edge between black
sky, headlights, your profile (driving),
my hands warm, my breath visible, the
radio playing defining
the edge of our
self-created
world

There is freedom to drive to
go to be in the safety of
our chosen sound, of
our exploratory conversation (our
stories), of sweetness on our
tongues, possibility on
our lips, the knowledge that
tonight will end, this
will pass, we will
move on and no longer be
young, and warm, and cold,
and curious and slowly
defining this space
between us

There is now a memory of
driving fast down open
roads with Elvis Costello singing to
(just) us, hot, sweet liquid down my
throat, your body just breaths
away from mine, and comfort
(deep) comfort because the night
is around us
the cold is around us
but between my hands I touch
warmth

There is a sense that it's endless that
night that space that feeling of being
fast and free and warm and cold and
protected and near that
it exists in some parallel universe that
I could somehow reach out to it
again, the quiet intimacy of being
known for the first time of
being held against
a frigid night
of knowing where I end where
you begin