A soul heavy as wet July.

Steam rising from the grass

lazily curling and uncurling its come-hither fist

in blue efficiency streetlight.

Windows fog over

in droplet-streaming screens obscuring

the midnight hush-your-mouth in each

of a line of bricked and columned houses.

This is a city morally opposed to sidewalks,

where stoplights go down at eleven.

This is a city whose treacherous shoulders I trudged

for a decade in the dark.

-M.