Wonder Wheel

Who we were on Coney Island
in the summer of ‘93:
You screamed when the car

ran forward on its rails
toward the impending
ocean. The pimpled teen

with his hand on the gears
suspended us, hinged.
I laughed at you. I’m sorry

the world has become
uglier since then, and we
with it. That couple

of desperate, lurching kids,
nescient, riven and hopeful –
we still meet them. We rent

rooms in this old, bare city.
I listen to you breathe
when I can’t sleep.

Your steady murmur
through the night gives me
such comfort. The wheel

should be a signal to us,
off balance in our press
and shriek. I came home

then with a welt from
the Tilt-a-Whirl, and you lay
on me, belly to belly, looked

at my eyes. I didn’t know
better than bruises.
You saw a father figure

for a child neither of us
knew we wanted yet.
He’s sleeping now and

you’re awake again, another day.
How our bodies drop and slow.
How we glimpse each other

in the rising light and immanent
waves. How we hold these kids
aloft in the possible sun.

Aaron Landsman writes, makes performances and other events. His writing has been or is coming soon in Public Seminar, Mudfish, Hobart, and Theater Magazine. He got a Guggenheim in Theater in 2017. He's working on a book about the performance of democracy called No One Is Qualified. He teaches part-time at Princeton. @thinaar (gram and twit).