I remember the taste of the 

first drink he bought me that loud night

paid for out of a pink-grey wallet discarded 

by an older sister

crumpled, multi-colored bills

hastily counted

I said he'd be the only one I'd ever 

drink myself into silliness with

in the corner of hidden bar

high on a corkscrew medieval road

Caught in a web that stretched from his 

blue-eyed smile to the cigar smoke that

ringed the entrance

the music spilled through it

onto the cobblestoned street

and ran into the gutters where

the castle's shadow alighted

dimly swimming

in the streaming liquid sound

it was always -- Weinbrandcola, bitte

braun, braun Weinbrand

we huddled there underneath dusty lights

he easing everything and making the

room slide into curved warm shapes 

and afterward

as he slumbered, face turned from the moonlight

I thought of pulling the night down

rocky-crystal, into tight glasses

nestled in our

hot hands.

--------------

I was an exchange student to Germany in high school. This was the only poem to come out of it.