Knoxville, Summer 1985

Walking Highland to 13th,
the street transforms into
a sun-scabbed cul-de-sac.
Asphalt exhales decades—
gasoline ghosts,
mystery fluids,
vapors curling
like jungle steam.

Clapboard houses
sport kudzu sweaters,
porches droop with
secondhand furniture,
their arms, applauding
Tibetan prayer flags,
casting shade over
mold-stained Bud Light coolers.
I walk the centerline,
cheap shoes and youthful swagger
amplified and thundering.

And then—
her.

The girl,
on her porch,
book open in her lap.
She doesn’t look up.
I don’t say hello.
We are passing strangers,
strangers passing.

But my feet betray me.
They wander her walkway,
I offer an outstretched hand.
She glances up,
her fingers—damp, electric—
find mine.
She unfolds herself
from a sagging chair,
foam bleeding from its seams,
she steps into me.

I spin her like a carousel top.
Coconut-scented hair brushes my face,
her cheek presses against my chest.
We sway to the faint rhythm
of distant Cumberland Avenue music,
sharing seconds elongated
into something eternal.

We don’t speak.
What could we say?
Twenty-something laments:
school,
poverty,
parents who smother with love
but miss the mark.
The world is heavy,
senseless,
humid.
Like this moment—
perfect,
pointless.
Memorable for me,
but the wine on her breath
testifies she’ll forget by morning.

Her lips part,
a whisper rising—
but I silence it with a finger.
“Shhhh,” I say.
“I’m about to get towed.”

Our mouths meet—
accidentally, briefly, awkwardly,
a kiss of regret chambered.
Her eyes, soft and brown behind glasses,
hide futures we’ll never share:
endless dinners,
a daughter in college,
grandchildren’s first cries,
a pair of cemetery plots.

She belongs
to someone else I’m certain.
Her heart, borrowed for moments,
slips from my grasp like vapors curling.
I am too young, too clumsy,
I bow, kiss her wrist,
and retreat to the sidewalk.
She doesn’t look back.

A block away,
gum clings to my shoe—
pink strings stretching like
wedding streamers
from a canceled ceremony.

At the hill’s crest,
the city pours into mirrors of gold.
In a single pane of the Sunsphere,
I see my life,
a solitary square,
gazing down,
stern and knowing;
an Appalachian grandfather
with tobacco in cheek.
“There are worlds of porches,” it says
with a muffled drawl.
“Worlds of books.
Life belongs to those
who look,
and those who dare to dance
with expectations.”

          — © Rick Baldwin