The Empire State Building Takes a Lover

She wears glamour
like skin, pulsing
silver and purple
like God’s personal rainbow
as if a lost girl
could promise
that kind of redemption
once the bars close
and the sun sets like fire
over the Hudson.

Even in the dead of Spring
as people fled, she stripped
down to her heartbeat,
rocked us to sleep
like only a lost girl can.
One night I caught her
light thrumming from hood to tip
as I shadowed her rhythm,
and promised to never leave,
our breath thin as ghosts.

Nancy Hightower has been published in Longleaf Review, Entropy, Sundog Lit, Barren Magazine, and Drunk Monkeys, among others. Her first collection of poetry, The Acolyte, was published in 2015 by Port Yonder Press and was a finalist for the Elgin Award Book of the Year. Her story 'Medusa Gets a Girlfriend' was chosen for Wigleaf's Top 50 in 2017. In 2018, she was granted a micro-residency at the Strand Bookstore by The Poetry Society of New York as part of their joint Poet-A-Day Project. She currently teaches at Hunter College.