The garage held the cold air.
Not enough to send us inside,
but enough for my breath to turn pale
in the darkness.
You stood across from me,
rolling a joint with slow hands.
Outside, the moon hung low
and stars slipped through the open door.
From the kitchen,
Frank Sinatra drifted,
crooning about strangers in the night,
like he understood something we didn’t.
I remember the paper cracking
faintly between your fingers,
the embers glowing in the dark.
The joint was warm when you passed it,
still holding the shape of your hand.
It tasted earthy, smoke heavy on my tongue,
clinging to the back of my throat.
The smell clung to everything—
your flannel, my hair, the cool air,
the silence between us.
We passed it back and forth
without speaking,
watching the smoke disappear.
There was only a narrow space between us,
and still,
I spent the whole night staring across it.
Moonlight caught your mouth,
eyes half-hidden
between tiredness and smoke.
Part of me believed
the night would never end.
Sinatra would keep singing from the kitchen,
the cold would never deepen,
and we would stay young.