My City is Gone

I’m just back from dinner with absent friends.
I went early and got myself a table for four.

I toasted each of them in turn. That took three glasses
of wine to do, and I got three generous pours. 

It’s 72 degrees in the house, and the weight of the air
on my chest is welcome down here on the floor. 

Good for the back and the buzz in my head to face 
a ceiling again, the angle from when being young 

was all I knew, and good to be listening with friends
again, who never got this old, to The Pretenders.

First published in the Dash Literary Journal