Certainly Chloe and Olivia will feel nostalgia
for the night spent as contortionists
on the Green Line.  Its glass wall and bright light
predicted a future that never quite happened
above or below ground.

Of course Chloe and Olivia forget the bleach
that permeated the future or the smell
of popcorn that no one ever buys
but is still scattered on the tracks
and the concrete floor that resists green.

Above it might even have been 
broad daylight once they rode
to the end of the line.

True, I feel nostalgia for the online yoga class
I took with a contortionist in Boston.
When I did upward facing dog instead
of an embryo’s cobra, I felt
I could return to the summer before,

itself a form of nostalgia for years
spent becoming someone else as I walked
around the city in an endless loop,
like the wheel my former teacher might 
now be doing in the city

where Chloe and Olivia pose in camel
before they board the train that takes them back
to their lives at the end of the Green Line.

In easy summer,
the smooth Wabash
twinkled.  She thought she could
see bottom:
stones that would not cut,

water that would
not infect swimmers’ blood.
Yes, boys could
swim this calm river,
not lose their way

in weeds or overturned
shopping carts.
Boys could float their way
west, through this town,
like their unborn son did.

But she knew;
he too knew better. 
That night they’d take
the train east, away from
the Wabash,

the ghosts of young boys
always floating,
riding the murky snake,
the river
that would pull them down.