By Jennifer Jabaily-Blackburn

We met between cars on the Great Western line,
Paddington to Penzance, smoking out the window.

He was wiry & tangled, his matted mess of hair
tugged up into a ponytail. An ancient guitar

slung over his shoulder, he asked if I’d mind
if he sang me a song, a shadow double

of a boy I loved to the point of embarrassment
when I was fifteen. At home, years after,

the image and afterimage converge: copies
drawn poorly from memory, extended to all

impossible directions. All simultaneously
living and dead in L.A. & London,

Penzance & Boston & not a one of them
thinking of me these days, not even in passing.

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