Aqua Dragons #3: Time Dilation (Dojo St Mark’s)

On the night after you left

I found I was able to time travel

a free falling particle crashing

through an Einstein–Rosen bridge

opened in the void of your departure

I wormed my way to Dojo, St Mark’s Place

where I woke from a long, hard night

falling out of gravitational collapse

under the awning

the scent of buckwheat and ginger

wafting onto the street

the line for entry grew long

like insatiable hunger

a past pressing against the lips as wind, age

light in a box

the certainty of repetition

brownstones became redstones

footsteps on cobblestones

in the East Village of my mind

and this was no restaurant

I walked and walked

but got no closer to sustenance

wherever I was going at this hour

curving in arbitrarily negative self-intersection

had to be alone

a destination increasingly vague

the air turned to grey ice

people who filled the streets faded into clouds

while I continued to walk backwards through time

eyes bleeding with longing and the flash of orange neon

against a dark brick facade

even in that light it was clear

I would never reach dinner

or feel at home again

in this closed curve of distance

warped to obsolescence

returning from the future

on a shore of time

where I no longer belonged.