Nightlife
︎︎︎ Jonathan Aprea
︎ Nov 3, 2025
There was a time when all I wanted
was to be lost inside a dark room
where the lights flash and we dance and bloom
out of the skin of our thin shirts like haunted
flowers, where we leave to walk
beneath the narrow sky to talk
with our hands and touch. I am daunted
by how nothing but your fingers intertwined
in my hair could make the night’s petals align
in my veins and then fall. I know
about the holiness of breathing air, how the snow
of its stars makes patterns, how although
all of it goes away, no it doesn’t. I fear
the things I understand. The slow
crash of morning after morning here.
was to be lost inside a dark room
where the lights flash and we dance and bloom
out of the skin of our thin shirts like haunted
flowers, where we leave to walk
beneath the narrow sky to talk
with our hands and touch. I am daunted
by how nothing but your fingers intertwined
in my hair could make the night’s petals align
in my veins and then fall. I know
about the holiness of breathing air, how the snow
of its stars makes patterns, how although
all of it goes away, no it doesn’t. I fear
the things I understand. The slow
crash of morning after morning here.
Jonathan Aprea is a writer living in New York City. He edits Poet Tree Magazine.