Words traveled on the breeze on moonlit
nights, moonless nights, rainy nights,
humid nights, freezing nights,
floating over houses where husbands
and wives bickered, over bars where
voyeurs eyeballed each other while
drinking their courage, over city streets
slipping under the feet of the maligned
miscreant running from shadow to shadow.

Words spoken in the flickering light of the
TV through a filter of whiskey, under the
sheets of a missing person sleeping in a car
in a hospital parking lot.
Words heard in an empty room smelling of
paint and cigarettes and desperation while
children do homework and eat M&M’s.

Through the nights they flew from speaker to
listener, over the rubble of secrecy and through
a vortex of duplicity and their credence was as
elusive as swamp smoke and as trustworthy as heat
lightening, choking and burning the throats
from which they whispered.