The streetlight flickers like a dying god

whispering Morse code to rats in the gutter.

Your name is a password no one remembers.

Even your shadow keeps walking without you.

In the alley where pigeons preach,

graffiti bleeds like broken commandments.

You light a cigarette with a match

you stole from a dream you forgot waking.

Time hiccups.

A train screams beneath your ribs—

metal wheels grinding over yesterday.

The sky is hung with static

and a crescent moon shaped like a blade.

There’s a man on the rooftop

wearing a crown of television wires,

chanting stock prices in tongues.

You nod. It makes as much sense as anything.

You check your watch.

It’s melted.

You check your heart.

It’s locked in a briefcase on a train

headed anywhere-but-here.

You laugh because the vending machine

refused your last coin.

You laugh because

you might be the vending machine.