… outside, the city’s steamy halo
drifts like the soft glow of skin
into weightless night hours,
and up there five tiny dots,
I mistake them for airplanes at first
but they won’t move,
they won’t cross the dirty grey sky,
they seem to reverberate the five street lamps below,
their street lamp gloom upon rain-wet asphalt,
I fix the five stars high above,
they may be dead, may be pulsating still,
they won’t move, not now,
because nothing can happen right now,
and cigarette smoke swirls around me,
then swirls out of the window
into the weightless and dirty grey night…