I have never known a 1am so quiet
as when I led you up and out of the underground
where through the tunnels the U3 thundered more stoic than blood rushing
in my veins which you had traced with curious fingers at a café table
and an ocean of a heartbeat I swore I could hear through your skin
as amplified as a loudspeaker
as we embraced each other for the first time
and you discovered the exact amount of your arm it would take
to measure how much of me to tuck perfectly into you
and we stood in the square under a booming chromatic cathedral
lighting the night sky enough to see your grey-blue eyes
which, yes, I could do quite well without my glasses
and in my memory, they flickered with some hint of green, like mine,
like the colors of St. Stephan’s tiles
muraled over us in hushed protection
but maybe that was just me
wonderstruck and wishing to keep you closer than the next day’s plane would allow
and as the night air enclosed us in its bubble
and nearby, or miles away, swarms of teenagers chattered with anticipation
out to discover how a first love starts
and there were we, twenty years later, but just as giddy and bursting and red-faced
and the reason I’m telling you this now is that
I saw what might have grown in the space between us if we had the time for
weekend afternoon sun and corners-of-eyes smiling and early morning fingers intertwining
and hands cradling faces beaming with more depth than any kiss could ever convey
and in that urban din of sound and color
we heard the music of no known tune
but remembering it now
I like to imagine that it was an eigentone
which waved between our inner parallels
and we swayed to no other sound than that.
Eleanor Keisman
Eleanor Keisman is an American expatriate based in Vienna, Austria, working in the communications department of an international educational NGO. Her essays, short stories, and poems have appeared in Litro Magazine, The Bangalore Review, Tough Crime, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, as well as adapted for a podcast "The Other Stories". She has an MFA in creative writing and co-organizes an English-language writing club in Vienna. In her free time, she enjoys hiking in the Vienna Woods, cooking, and reading. She has just finished her first novel.
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