epic stock
Passage
by Laurinda Lind

When you got back from Nicaragua
you looked like a beach boy, umber-
armed from the revolution, new-bearded

and ragged after a month of Montezuma’s
revenge. I biked to meet you on the road
since my car was defunct and it was

dangerous to be together. You smelled
of summer when I sat in your sedan
and, properly, we didn’t touch until

you parked by a trestle and we hiked
deep down a June-heavy lane. After
that, you braked the car by every bridge

to kiss me crazy—by now, how many spans
past. Beaches grew cold beneath the frost,
the Nicaraguans bided their little while

then sank from the news cycle, and we
both changed too, charged as we were
by that scented season before the clock

caught and raced us forward to the fall.

First published in Exit 13

Photo by Epic Stock. 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: During an uneasy time in the Americas, I was in a double-rebound relationship that everyone around us predicted would end disastrously. That was 35 years ago, and we are still together.

Lind

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Laurinda Lind lives in New York’s North Country. Some of her writing is in Blue Earth Review, New American Writing, Paterson Literary Review, and Spillway. She is a Keats-Shelley Prize winner and a finalist in several other writing competitions.