Port Town

A familiar sound drags me back,

so far back,

a decade?

Has it really been two?

An echo,

A dialectal variant,

Sie klingt wie du.

The hands of time have surely changed you,

shaped you,

transformed you into something unrecognizable and new,

as I know they have for me,

save for these pieces,

bits that drift around on salty breezes,

dried summer leaves heralding autumn.

You’re no longer a name,

or a face,

you’re, chronologically, a particular place,

a cocktail of youthful chemicals creating a base,

in a vessel for a series of firsts,

and to look into your eyes once more,

would be to stare into the mouth of a near-empty bottle,

hoping to experience that familiar intoxication,

on a few residual drops.