it fell from a second-story window
like droplets, real heavy fucking droplets,
off an air-conditioning unit I didn’t
recognize until I climbed the fire escape
and peered down below
at the middle-aged couples
on the café terrace and saw balding heads
turn bony shoulders wrapped loosely in thinning skin
away from glasses of red wine, slowing their easy movements
in hushed respect of the man and his pastoral sobriety wheeled away
from his evening broadcast and nightcap,
cool in his undershirt dirtied with bread crumbs and
unruly toothpaste and boxers of dust bunnies and dried urine maybe
a little rust and sweat from leaning out the window to adjust the satellite
to get a better signal.
My luxury box allowed me
a view of the passing that made me so dizzy I took great caution
to climb back down the iron ladder
to find only the morning’s concrete
unchanged.
