Do you have any eights
that might gesture toward infinity
if you turn the card sideways?

The games we played
as we straddled so many
centuries. Strangers

clocking in so many
check-for-ticks
kind of days. Forty years

ago we met on a hot
Connecticut night
under a new wave moon.

Music blaring
from a boombox.
No bluffing necessary.

Fantastical stories
scribbled into a notebook.
Separating fact from

hallucination

was easier then.
The trees shuddered
when they asked:

Where were you

when they cut the deck
in half to expose
the Earth’s past climate?