When the bus leaves, the street mourns.
Roads flake like wallpaper paste.
The streetlights are bitter like soap, so
the night chews it up and spits
it into blandness, dust.
The clouds press themselves down
like lips draw ghosts on the windowpane.
The sky bends inwards like wax,
threads silence between
crosswalks. Smoke hangs over
the tarmac, brittle
like an empty house–
home is elsewhere,
and you with it.