you’re the new guy so you work the graveyard shift
and the boss has finally gone home,
you can smoke a cigarette in peace
no hiding
no sneaking around the corner.
the garbage trucks clean up the streets.
you watch the last of the drunk girls stumble out,
some go home alone
some fight with their phone.
the city is finally yours.
just a faraway hum of an ambulance
no taxi horns
no one is left to ask anything of you.
and the soft grey clouds
reach over the low tenements
like an exhale of breath
and if you listen closely
you can almost hear god in the silence
whispering the resonance of something you used to know by heart
but can’t quite remember.
alone.
finally.
the last day has left
and the new one hasn’t quite come.
it’s a feeling almost like happiness.
you can love anything
under the light of the moon.
it’s another story
come dawn
is the author of Hawaiian Shirts In The Electric Chair (Kuboa Press, 2014).
Visit him at
www.ScottLaudati.com.