The Time Traveler Takes His N^th Lover at a Point of Departure

Just as I'm leaving this time

I meet you waiting for a train.

You smell of soap and cheap cologne,

the kind kids buy for their mothers

and teachers at discount stores.

Beneath the scent, I sense your fear

like a ground swirl of bitter memory.

Was it his shadow before a midnight

window in the indivisible dark,

blotting out the hard white stars

and the limbs of leafless trees?

Was it what no longer happened

in your parents' bedroom that

entailed a childhood's end?

The train ratchets by with bars

of light for rich and poor alike.

You know what has transpired

in the hidden coaches, beyond

the walls of private cells,

the self of passive prisons.

Your scars give you away.

Centuries have come and gone

in the flash of a passing station

since my arrival in this era of

hidden passions and unspoken ties.

Take my hand and lie down with me

between these tracks that reach

to the event horizon and back again,

where even the death of an insect

can change the past forever.