when you’ve developed a habit of walking away at night you can’t help but notice yellow streets and yellow teeth and your own wheezing like a broken down car, thinking you see cats twitching their tails in the glowing smog but knowing your alley rat soul is safe in the sewer sighs that curl around your legs

you are filled with thoughts of masks and gas stations and other lonely things like autumn light in the dead of winter that doesn’t feel like a winter at all

at 2am you’re at the bottom of the ocean lingering in the salty shambles of adventure and your savage toleration of sea-level, waiting to arrive home to a glass of wine, naked and burgundy and holding its breath awaiting its immaculate consumption

you fall asleep to fever dreams, stuck in the wet nest of a bald and biting moon, and hope that you won’t sleep through tomorrow