It’s been half a year since Cambridge

since the quiet quiver of my pen
in a silent, soiled, but well-lit room
on the third floor of a lemon white cottage
beside Trumpington Street

since the cold malt of thick chocolate milk

molten on my tongue after spinach and ricotta crepes
noshed during the lucid lunch hour
beneath St. Mary’s Tower,
across from the grandiose King’s College Chapel,
which loomed over all

since the hot jasmine in a quick Victorian fix-type cafe
on days when the sky wept and loosed its tears in droves,
pattering and then teeming
down on the church with the centenarian graveyard
and hosts who served charming crystalline apple juice

with the truest smiles

down on the oblong and myriad windows of Pembroke College
on the lavender and gold stained glass
of the Corpus Christi’s commodious chapel—

this jasmine tea steaming beside the chessboard
of checkered chestnut and chaste white squares,
the broad-rimmed glasses of my opponent from Lisbon
bore dark, searching medallions beneath jet-black eyebrows
following the dance of his thin fingers around the petite pieces

I beheld the drowning of seven hundred years
the last hushed wallowing of the city before an aeonian silence
Cambridge heaved its last sigh
in halted taxi cabs, hawkers, and Chinese visitors

even the chronophage choked down his final tick
before his fulgent glint vanished in the deluge

a shadow fell over the deserted marketplace

over the awning beneath which the hatted woman crouched
clutching her stamps of lions and calligraphy

over the mound from where the boy gazed upon the assortment of spires

while licking his Ferrero ice cream

over the town, my town

when a swift demise befell my Portuguese friend’s king.

The rain swallowed my words, “checkmate”