Summer-sick delirium. Sky-high nightlight. Chilled-sweat cocoon.
Too aware for dreaming, I find myself in a flat-grey foundry. Edges glowing molten.
Envisioning a young, will-be mother who doesn’t realize I’m just a time traveler. An inter-continual tourist.
I don’t fill her in. Let her, uncharacteristically, close the range. Keep my distance.
She, too, finds herself nearly alone. Among new and intimidating strangers. Exposed, unlike me, to their immediate veracity.
I’ve seen them age. Soften. Know better than to believe they can hurt either of us.
Little more than a potential consequence of choices yet to be made, I am happy to extend the invicibility of my irrelevance. Or, perhaps, just impossibly practiced.
It could be reflex.
“He sounds nice,” I echo. “And who doesn’t have some baggage?”
Any hint of ominous irony long sinced divorced from my disposition. Intrigued by the possibility that this could all be a paradox.
Awakened, muscles trembling, head throbbing.
Day looming.
Forged impenetrable.
Cutting to the heart of the matter.
HR Lincoln 
it makes me really happy that you love words so much, and that it really shows in your writing. that you have an appreciation of phonology — so much writing lately, poetry especially i suppose, seems to lack a joy in the sounds of words, their juxtapositions. all too plain.but collocations like “sky-high nightlight” “intercontinual tourist” “invincibility of my irrelevance”. and the title too, of course = tasty.
Me, too.
I briefly changed “Sky-high nightlight” because it doesn’t really convey what I was trying to express, but then the cadence was all wrong and I was convinced that the specific meaning was less important than the feeling.
The title was something that I tacked on nearer to completion, but it’s a phrase that I’ve had rattling around in my brain for years. I’m glad that I finally found a place to set it free.
And I never would have thought to write this way if I hadn’t read your work.
yes! word-feeling sometimes needs to be put ahead of the meaning. i like ‘sky-high nightlight’ in particular because it reminds me of old norse kennings — those little compressed metaphors. (for this one, i immediately thought of the moon)
that is awfully kind of you to say that about my words — i do search for tasty word combinations and it makes me very happy that some of mine inspired you.