night twists around my body
hunched up on the cold stone steps
loving
the dark empty streets
they're sad and gentle
and offer up their change for one more
fucking pack of cigarettes
so i pick up their dirty nickels
with frozen hands.
streetlights lick my naked neck
and play on closed eyelids, filtered
through grime and grit
city air smelling like
sex in my brain.
somewhere fourteen streets away a church bell rings
and a woman screams, i think, it could be
a bird, or screeching brakes
i’m too far away to discern,
or to care, i’m too silent
to be anyone’s savior.
i count the lines scratched into this
fragile notebook, this feeble epitaph
to the night melting into grey;
she leaves me for another girl, another
side of the world, kissing me
goodbye with a tongue like ice
melting in my mouth and dripping off my fingertips;
dirty icicles by the sidewalks
show me the way home.