Rest Stop, Late Autumn, Love Me

i.

We stopped at the gas station at 11:59. Fallow night bleak with November frost —  We devoured the roadside weeds in a single drenching headlight, pulled in, killed the music. We sat silent a moment before opening those doors, touching that cold touchless air. We fell into the bare moonlight, its tenacious gasp upon decades of pavement, emptied of its everyday souls. We stuffed our hands in our pockets, threw the hoods over our heads, tried to dissipate. 

ii.

We entered that lunary rest-stop: a fetid, mildewy rush, like a heartbeat within your ear. We went for the shelves, re-stocked our girl needs, as we licked our lips of ourselves, our nervous nectar —  bubblegum, tampons, charging cable, vape juice, sweethearts, two bottled waters, all doused in a fumble of blown love, downcast eyes darkened liquid without sleep. You stood further and further from me until —  a hand. You put a hand on my shoulder and I almost mistook you for my mother at sixteen, erratic blue iris without recoil, without the rough animality of this love. Eyes melted blue for a full moment until —  

iii.

June. It was June in that gas station. I could cry. Cessation fused into abyssal summer. You shiver like a crept-upon want, skin afire beneath that mottled fabric. We almost speak —  tense upper lips almost bled apart. It is our lie. It is our lullaby. We check out. We leave. Beneath the blood of the exit sign, the first snow falls, while midnight enters in our place.