Above Jay Street

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Your days have gotten so long—
eating dry toast at the dark window
watching a double-parked truck
shuddering on the pavement,
the rising sun silvering a peanut
of oil between its tires. Then,
twelve hours later, coming home
tired from work, that same smudge
still shiny under a streetlamp.
That whole time, what happened?
You can’t remember a single
phone call, just one second
two hours ago when your heart—
like a passenger trapped
in a glass elevator— went up fast
because walking between towers
you saw a brown confetti of dead
leaves in the blue sky, swirling
and tumbling together in the breezeway,
shucked and torn but still dancing,
dozens of them, above Jay Street.